His and her reasons
by Komillia
Summary: Rousseau Academy. Spring. He was bored. She was new. A chance encounter becomes the start of something new, something different and something they did not expect. [YzakShiho]
1. His life

**His and her reasons  
Chapter 1: His life **

Notes: I'm back with a new Yzak/Shiho story, since I'm not exactly the most diverse person when it comes to writing GS pairings. It's somewhat of an AU, so it disregards the Gundam SEED and Gundam SEED Destiny plotlines. I hope you'll like it despite that and enjoy reading this. Don't hesitate to let me know what you think of this chapter. :)

---

Life was filled with boring things. Watching paint dry, homework, running slowly, meditation, great aunts and a whole bunch of other things that Yzak didn't care enough about to remember. But right now there was nothing on the list of boring things that could top Athrun Zala's babbling.

"Most of the sponsers for the festival are local businesses and aside from representing ourselves we are also representing them. As a part of the student council you must remember that our behavior and manners reflect the entire school…"

_Blah blah blah… shut it up, pretty boy. _

"Yzak!"

Pulling the pen he had been chewing on out of his mouth, Yzak looked up to see that everyone in the room was staring at him. That included the blue haired young man who was sitting at the end of the table and looking at him sternly. Sighing quietly to himself, Yzak tucked the pen behind his ear.

"Yes?" he drawled lazily.

"As the president of the disciplinary committee it is extremely crucial that you take not of all of this," Athrun went on. "The festival will be the cause of a few incidents, it is your job to make sure that they will no escalate to the point of becoming a problem. Understand?"

Yzak stared at Athrun defiantly.

"Yes," he said and put his feet up on the table.

_Bastard._

---

The disciplinary committee was a branch out of the student council. Decisions made by the faculty and the student council were enforced by the disciplinary committee who patroled the corridors and made sure that no one behaved out of fashion or broke any rules. If it was one thing Yzak could appreciate about being the head of the committee it would be his authority to punish almost every student in school. The bad thing was, since that the committee was directly under the student council, that he had to take orders from that idiot Athrun Zala.

This was why every Tuesday morning Yzak had to sit through a meeting that consisted of trying not to die of boredom. It was also why every Thursday noon he trudged to the committee's room in a foul mood and slammed every door he could find on his way there.

Scared first years threw themselves out of the way as he walked through the corridors and even a small group of third years pressed themselves against the wall as Yzak walked down the stairs. He took two steps at the time, hands placed in his pockets to hide the fists he had made. Descending to the ground floor, he rushed past the main corridor and finally reached a wooden door that looked like it had been kicked on many times.

Pulling his jacket off and loosening his tie, Yzak knocked the door out of his way. The door flew open, revealing a small room with walls that had once been bright yellow. It was sparsely decorated, with four chairs, a somewhat damaged table and an old, worn out couch that at some point had been set on fire. A small refridgerator stood in the corner, letting out buzzing noises once in a while. The room only had two very small windows, situated highly on the wall. Yzak tossed his jacket and book bag over the back of a chair and threw himself on the couch.

"GODDAMNIT!"

The door to the room was still swaying back and forth because of the force Yzak had used. He glared angrily at it, as if it was the cause of his anger. It was soon pushed open again, this time by a gentler hand.

"Council meeting again, huh?"

Dearka Elthman walked into the room casually. He hung his jacket and bag over a chair just like Yzak had and sat on the table. He was looking rather windswept, as if he had run all the way to school or stood in front of a fan for ten minutes.

"I HATE THAT GUY!"

Dearka smirked.

"What else is new?"

"That bastard tried to tell me how to do my job!" Yzak yelled, jumping up from the couch.

"Well, technically he's supposed to, being the head of the student council and all…" Dearka murmured but Yzak went on ranting as if he had not heard him. As if ranting was not enough, he turned around and started to kick the door.

"Why do I keep losing to that idiot! There's nothing special about him! Why was he elected as the head of the student council! I have to take my freaking orders from him! GAAHH!"

Dearka just sighed and watched Yzak abuse the door in every possible way, only stopping occasionally to yell in pain or curse. Other students who passed by and saw Yzak's display of anger only lowered their heads and ran as fast as they could. However, there were always those too slow or inexperienced to escape.

"YOU THERE!" Yzak shouted, catching sight of a first year who was unfortunate enough to get spotted. "YES, I MEAN YOU!"

The boy stopped immediately, literally trembling at the sight of Yzak when he entered the corridor. He almost held up his book bag in front of him as a shield.

"Y-yes…?"

Yzak studied the boy closely from head to toe.

"Your bag, open it," he ordered.

The boy opened his bag with trembling hands. Once it was open he held it so that Yzak could take a look at its contents. Books, notebooks, pens, rulers… nothing out of the ordinary. Then suddenly his watchful eyes caught sight of something and he reached into the bag to pick it up. The boy looked at Yzak with both fear and curiousity as Yzak held the object up.

"An orange," Yzak said coldly.

"Y-yes," the boy stuttered. "I bring fruit to eat during breaks… I mean, um, I heard it's good to do that, keeps the energy level up…"

"Do you know that there are people who are allergic to citrus fruits?" Yzak cut off, taking a few forward and causing the boy to stumble backwards into a locker. "All they have to do is to smell the scent of an orange to get an allergic reaction! Did you know that?"

"No… s,sir, I had no idea…"

"Well, now you do!" Yzak screamed. "Don't let me see you with an orange ever again, UNDERSTAND?"

"Yes.. please, don't…"

"THEN SCRAM!"

The boy slowly moved away from Yzak, still too paralyzed by fear to move quickly. This only aggravated Yzak more, whose vision turned red upon seeing how pathetic the boy looked.

"The bell has already rung, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU STALLING FOR!"

Raising his arm, Yzak hurled the orange with as much force as he could. The orange flew through the air and struck the boy in the back of his head as he was walking. It bounced and then rolled out of sight, while the boy rushed off as fast as he could. Yzak took another step to see how fast he was going.

"If I smell oranges again, I'LL FIND YOU! You hear me…"

His words fade into nothing as he felt the wind being knocked out of him. Spinning around in a half circle, he stumbled backwards until he pushed against the wall to regain his balance. Once the world had stopped spinning, he stood up properly and his eyes searched frantically for whoever it was who had bumped into him. He did not have to look far though. Just three feet away stood a girl with long brown hair and bangs that cast a shade over face.

As if Athrun Zala and that annoying first year had not been enough.

"Watch where you're going!" Yzak shouted.

No apology, not even a stuttering attempt at it. The girl was looking downwards and just tried to walk around Yzak. His eyes narrowing in anger, Yzak turned around and grabbed the girl's arm as she tried to leave.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you!"

The girl just stood still, not reacting to Yzak at all. Yzak became somewhere between furious and shocked. What nerve!

"Hey! Are you deaf?"

Yzak stepped in front of the girl again and had a whole speech prepared about her lack of manners when the girl suddenly twisted her arm out of his grip. She pulled away from him and for the first time looked up with blazing, violet eyes.

"Had enough fun now?" she asked in a tone full of quiet restraint. "Made you feel like one of the big boys? I guess you have to when you don't really have anything else to show for it."

The girl turned around and walked away quickly from him, neither in fear nor anger. Yzak just stood there and watched her go. All his previous anger had been quickly replaced by the numb sort of shock and felt frozen to the spot. The girl walked away and turned around the corner. She was well out of sight but Yzak still did not move at all. He stood there in the empty corridor, hearing nothing but the beating of his own heart. It took a while for him to realize exactly why his anger had washed away and he felt shock in its place.

During all his time as a member of the disciplinary committee, this was the first time a normal student had dared to speak up against him.

---

Yzak Jule. Seventeen years old and son of Ezaria Jule. A second year at Rousseau Academy and one of its top students. He was liked and respected by some teachers, disliked but still respected by others. The disciplinary committee was only made up by himself and Dearka, but those who assumed that its strength was in numbers were wrong, very wrong. Every day he would patrol the school corridors, invoking fear in almost all the students, even those who were in their third year. Sometimes he would even invoke admiration and respect among those who sought to and wished to become like him.

This was his life.

What made him so feared among his peers was not that he was the head of the committee. It was his commanding presence and neverending will to always correct others. If you stepped a toe out of line, you could always bet that Yzak Jule would be there to see it and make sure that you would never even think about it again, let alone do it. Everyone knew this and knew that it was in their best interest to stay away from Yzak and pretend to be invisible when he was around.

Because of this common fact Yzak could not, if his life had depended on it, figure out why the girl had talked back to him earlier that morning. He spent most of maths looking out the window and during biology he pretended to study the dissected squid with deep concentration. The memory of the girl talking back at him was stuck in his mind and no matter how much he thought about it he could not understand. She had been perfectly calm when she spoke, in fact he got the distinct impression that she had not been scared at all which added to the whole mystery.

"Damn it!"

He punched the door open and entered the committee room. Instead of just throwing his bag over the bag of a chair, he spun and flung it full force at the wall. Luckily the wall took no damage from the bag, which bounced off lightly and landed on the floor with a dull "thump". Shortly afterwards Dearka followed him inside the room and sighed upon seeing Yzak aggravated beyond the point of reason for the second time that day.

"Still upset about Zala?" Dearka asked and sat down on the couch lazily. "With the way you're obsessed with him…"

"I'm not obsessed!" Yzak shrieked. "I just can't figure it out! It's driving me crazy!"

Dearka looked at him curiously.

"What are you talking about?"

Before Yzak even could think about where to begin or how to explain the strange thing, the door swung open for the third time. Standing in the doorway was Nichol Amarfi, a mild mannered first year. Yzak only knew him because he hung around Athrun Zala, which was reason enough to hate anyone.

"What do you want?" he snapped.

Nichol nearly backed away upon seeing Yzak, but in the end he stayed and smiled rather nervously.

"Ah… Athrun told me to come here…" he began.

"WHAT THE HELL DOES HE WANT!" Yzak hollered, grabbing Nichol by his collar and almost lifting him off his feet.

"There's been an incident in the cafeteria!" Nichol blurted out rapidly. "A new transfer student started a fight!"

"Hmpf." Yzak let go of Nichol and let him drop to the ground. "Fine, just bring him in here and let us take care of it."

He pulled out a chair, sat down and put his feet up on the table. God, he wished he had coffee, a drink, a cigarette… anything to soothe his nerves. This day was prooving to be too much. As he was in the middle trying to remember what he had learned at that anger management class, he noticed that Nichol was still standing there in the doorway.

"What?"

"Um… she's on her way here already," Nichol told and pulled out something from his bag. "I was just sent here to give you her file. Good luck!"

In the blink of an eye Nichol had thrown a paper folder on the table and managed to run out of sight. Yzak rolled his eyes at the boy, then reached for the folder. He opened it and felt his heart skip in shock.

---

Tuesday were always the worst part of the week. Worse than Mondays, because no matter how tiring Mondays were it was always the first day of school after weekend, which meant that one at least had had a bit of time to rest. It was worse than Wednesdays because on Wednesdays his classes did not start until 9 a.m. It was far worse than Thursdays, because Thursdays was the day before Friday and Fridays spoke for itself.

There was always the student council meeting on Tuesday mornings. As if that was not enough to drive Yzak crazy, here was this girl he had never seen before who had the audacity to not only talk back to him but also ignore what he had said completely.

Because of this, Yzak felt a strange sense of satisfaction upon having the same girl sitting by the table in the disciplinary committee room, with her arms crossed and him standing before her. She had come just a few minutes ago, escorted by a few students who had been there at the cafeteria to break up the fight. The room was empty save from Yzak and the girl, Dearka had left shortly after Nichol saying something about needing to speak to the photography club. What he had really meant was that he was going to try to hit on Miriallia Haww but Yzak had not figured that out until he had left and by that time it was too late to attempt to kill him. Now he was left alone with this girl and the folder Nichol had given to him earlier.

"Shiho Hahnenfuss," he read outloud from the folder. "Year two, former student at the Moliére Elementary School, transferred from Europa Academy at December One, as of… today? Guess you're one of those people who couldn't wait to cause trouble."

The girl glanced up quickly, but once she met Yzak's eyes she turned her eyes away.

"Guess you're one of those who are quick to label others," she muttered. "Are you done yet? Shouldn't you be getting a teacher to do the real job?"

His eye twitching involuntarily, Yzak stepped closer to the table and brought both his hands down in a loud slam that made the whole table shake. Even Shiho shook slightly although she regained her composure quickly.

"This is the real job, Hahnenfuss," Yzak snarled. "Here at Rousseau we believe in discipline and behavior. The faculty have complete faith in that we as students will be able to solve all our differences on our own, even when it comes to new, trouble making, transfer students."

"Well, good for you." Shiho did something between an eyeroll and a forced smile. She stood up. "Give me my punishment, what will it be? Detention? Cleaning duty?"

Yzak promptly walked over to her. Hands grasping her shoulders, he pushed her down roughly back on the chair again. When he pushed her back, she stared back at him with wide eyes and a half open mouth. Suddenly she was not looking so calm anymore and a shiver ran down Yzak's spine.

"You're going to tell me why you started that fight," Yzak growled. "I have a list of fourty-five people who witnessed you throwing a bowl of Caesar salad at Alexander Carrows. Now why did you do it?"

As she breathed, her body heaved up and down beneath his hands.

"It's Tuesday," she whispered after a while. "Tuesdays are always boring. Thought that I'd liven up the school if I…"

"What sort of idiot do you take me for?" Yzak hissed.

"The kind of idiot you act like," she retorted quickly.

Yzak pushed Shiho away from him as he let go, nearly causing the chair to tip over and fall with her still sitting on it. Returning to his original spot on the other side of the table, he tore a paper sheet from his notepad and started to scribble fervently on it.

"I will speak to your teacher and suggest that you should receive a week's cleaning duty as punishment," he said and took a quick look at the folder before he continued. "You're in class… 2A."

"Yes."

"Then Mr Ghani is the teacher in charge," Yzak went on and finished his writing. He put down the pen carelessly and crossed his arms as he looked at Shiho. "Now get the hell out of here."

Without looking at him, Shiho got up and left the room as quickly as she could. She did not say a word or even slam the door on her way out.

A cool gust of wind blew through the open window and Yzak took a deep breath while enjoying the sudden silence. Soothing, calm, silence. No one bothering him. But the moment of enjoyment did not last long and only seconds later there was a strange feeling of uneasiness in his heart. He kept getting the distinct feeling that something was wrong. He had missed something, something that prevented him from seeing the whole picture.

Opening his eyes, he reached for the first thing he caught sight on.

_Shiho Hahnenfuss._

After staring at the cover with the name printed on it, Yzak opened the folder again. The first page was the one he had just written himself, he flipped past that one and went onto the second page. It was a simple chart with all the basic information that every student had, with names, birth dates, previous schools and grades. He traced the columns of the chart with his finger and stopped at the list of previous schools.

_Europa Academy. December One._

He knew well enough what kind of school Europa was. It was one specializing in social studies and science and probably the most exclusive and prestigious school in all of the PLANTs. Though Rousseau was not far behind and had a good reputation of its one, one would without a doubt choose Europa over it.

_Entrance exams: 295/320_

It was the score for the high school entrance exam she had taken almost a year and a half ago. A score way above average and anyone who scored over 280 points was considered an extremely talented students who would have practically no problems getting into their high school of choice.

Something was not right with her, it was definitely not right. By looking at the file Yzak already knew what sort of person she was. Being a former student at Europa would have meant that not only did she do well enough on the exams to get in, but she would also have passed the interviews with the teachers before being accepted. Europa did not just take anyone with a high score, it was selective in its students and made sure to get the right ones through a series of interviews. If she had passed all of those, then why had she transferred?

He sat there with his chin resting against his hands, quietly speculating. The fight in the cafeteria could have indicated violent tendencies but he doubted that anyone with those would get into Europa, let alone stay there for a year and a half without having anyone notice. Was there some other way she could have been forced out of there? But then again, would someone who had been kicked out of a school try to ruin her second chance by starting a fight on the first day?

_What the hell is she doing here at Rousseau?_ Yzak asked himself, leaning back in the chair.

He looked at the file again and at the personal information column.

_Class: 2A._

The same class as him.

---

The next few days he found himself watching her closely, stealing glances when no one was watching. He would be staring at her when he was supposed to solve math problems and while others read their textbooks in complete silence he was completely occupied with studying her. Sometimes teachers would ask him afterwards about his sudden lack of attention and encourage him to not space out.

Not that he was the only one not paying attention. By watching Shiho Yzak noticed how she often appeared to be somewhere else in her mind. Her seat was right next to the window and sometimes she'd spend half the lesson staring out at nothing in particular. It did not take long before he started to wonder what she was seeing and what thoughts circled in her mind every time she looked out the window. Was she dreaming that she was back at Europa?

Even when the bell rang and signalled the end of the physics lesson and the school day, he still did not move at all. Others immediately jumped up from their seats, gathered their things and left the classroom as quickly as possible. Yzak watched Shiho get up and pick up her books, neither slowly nor quickly.

"Oi, Yzak!"

Yzak turned around just in time to dodge Dearka attempting to slap him on the back of his head.

"What are you still sitting around here for?" he asked, having already packed up all of his things. "Let's go."

Opening his bag and carelessly stuffing all of his books and notes inside, Yzak looked up quickly towards Shiho's seat. She was gone.

He shot a death glare at Dearka because of that but Dearka, who was since long used to Yzak looking angry all the time, walked on without the slightest idea. They left the classroom and though Dearka was whistling playfully at first, he suddenly stopped upon catching sight of a brown haired girl walking down the hallway.

"M-Miriallia!"

The girl turned around and looked at Dearka. He walked over to her and Yzak could not resist rolling his eyes at Dearka's stupid grin and how he nearly stumbled over his own feet. How pathetic one became when infatuated with a girl, even Dearka who was usually so levelheaded.

"Hi," Miriallia greeted hesitantly as if she was not sure whether she wanted to talk to Dearka or not.

"H-hey," Dearka stuttered and smiled goofily. "How are you doing?"

"Fine, I guess. You?"

"Well, I… um…"

Yzak rolled his eyes again and turned around to leave. If Dearka wanted to make a fool out of himself for a girl he would have to do it alone.

"It's good that you're taking your cleaning duty so seriously but it's Friday today. Just clean the floor and you can go home after that."

"Yes, sir."

Yzak looked up upon hearing those two voices. Mr Ghani, his teacher, was standing at the end of the corridor with Shiho. She held a mop in her hands and next to her was a cart with cleaning products and a bucket of water. As Mr Ghani headed back into the teacher's lounge, Shiho pushed the cart forwards. She caught Yzak's eyes as she looked up briefly but went back into the classroom without a word.

For some reason, Yzak followed.

The classroom was completely empty, save for them. As Mr Ghani had said, it was Friday which meant that the only thing on people's heads was getting out of the school building as soon as possible. But Shiho did not seem to be in a hurry. Instead she took her time, starting with slowly picking up pencils and erasers that people had left. After that she opened the windows to let some air into the room and wet a washing cloth to clean the blackboard. She paid no attention to Yzak as she did all those things and it was like she did not even notice that he was there. Somehow, the thought of that made him feel small and insignificant.

"Hey," he called out, practically forcing her to acknowledge his presence. "What the hell are you doing?"

Shiho looked at him blankly.

"I'm cleaning."

Yzak rolled his eyes.

"Mr Ghani just told you to do the floor, why are you doing all the other stuff do?" he clarified.

Shiho shrugged and went on cleaning the blackboard without answering him. Yzak dropped his book bag on the floor and sat on the teacher's desk, planting his feet up on the teacher's chair. He did not do it to spite her but at least he got a reaction. Shiho turned her attention away from the blackboard and frowned.

"Shouldn't you know better than to do that?" she questioned. "Being in the disciplinary committee and all?"

"You're lecturing me on rules when you can't even follow them yourself," Yzak retorted. "Seriously, it's Friday. Why are you still here cleaning?"

"Because it's the punishment I got and I'm going to stay here until I've done what I'm supposed to," Shiho muttered, wiping the chalk off the blackboard quickly and then throwing the rag onto the cleaning cart quickly. "Can you just let me do that?"

Yzak shrugged.

"Do what you like."

He did not move from the desk, choosing to stay instead of leaving her alone. He still had not gotten what he had come from and it was not in Yzak's nature to give up that easily. For a few seconds Shiho looked at him in silence but once she realized that he was not going anywhere she just turned her back on him and concentrated on her tasks instead. His eyes followed her as she moved around the classroom, first putting up all the chairs and then when she returned to get the mop. Neither of them said anything though sometimes she'd look over her shoulder to see if he was still there. If he happened to catch her eyes, Yzak would look away.

Ten minutes later no one had still said a word. Shiho took her time cleaning and Yzak started to feel irritated each time he looked towards the clock and saw that only a few seconds had passed since he looked last time. Leaving the classroom and the whole thing behind him was tempting but something inside him refused to leave.

There was something that did not add up in his mind. This dutiful girl who insisted on staying behind to do more than what Mr Ghani had told her to do, was the same girl who had spoken up against him and then started a fight in the cafeteria. Something was not quite right and Yzak did not know what annoyed him most, that he could not figure it out or that he could not just forget about it. This was certainly not the first time he had to handle students who had started fights and definitely would not be the last. Why was she so different?

"I didn't think Europa academy had much tolerance for people who start fights," Yzak suddenly said. "Or is that why you here now?"

Shiho jumped slightly upon hearing him speak, he had startled her. But that seemed forgotten when she turned around to face him because there was a hint of anger in her expression.

"I really don't want to talk about that, especially not with you," she replied coldly.

"Too bad, as the head of the disciplinary committee you're under my watch. You step out of line and you end up on my 'to do'-list."

When Shiho stared at him with wide eyes, Yzak just stared back thinking that it was some kind of battle of wills. For a few seconds he was sure of winning it, then he noticed that Shiho was looking at him with shock and disbelief. It occurred to him then that this was not a staring contest at all. About the same time he realized what his words had sounded like.

Last time Yzak had blushed, really blushed, was in 9th grade when Lacus Clyne had given him a hug on the last day of school. However, now he found his cheeks reddening ten times as fast as they had back then, accompanied by his heart pounding rapidly.

He quickly jumped off the desk and grabbed his book bag.

"I… I didn't mean it like that!" he snapped defensively, refusing to look at Shiho as he bolted towards the door.

"Wait!"

Despite wanting to run out of there and disappear into some random hole where no one would ever find him, Yzak automatically stopped at the door when he heard her call out. He carefully stepped back and turned his head just a little to look at her.

She was still standing there with the mop in her hands, but had not actually done any cleaning since Yzak had spoken to her. There was a restrained smile on her lips, as if she found the whole thing funny but was trying hard not to laugh at him.

_Yeah, very funny indeed._

"What is it?" he muttered, eager to get out of there before she'd start laughing completely.

"This disciplinary committee…" she started. "Why are you in it? Why do you care at all if someone gets into trouble?"

The question caught him off guard but Yzak found himself answering it quickly.

"I don't care if anyone else gets in trouble. Usually I don't even care about knowing why people end up being sent to us. But this is my turf, no one is going to mess things up while I'm around. It might not be the most noble reason, but I'd rather do something than just stand around and watch people cause trouble. It's as simple as that."

He became aware of Shiho staring at him again, perhaps because he had launched into half of a long monologue. His cheeks began to burn again and the knowledge of having said too much to someone he did not know was making every second spent in this room unbearable. Frowning and his hand tightening his grip on his bookbag, he quickly left the room without saying another word.

---

When Tuesday morning came again, Yzak reluctantly went into the student council room and slammed the door after him as the meeting started. Around 10 p.m. he was first to leave the room, hands stuck in his pockets and feeling as if his head was about to explode. Hearing Athrun Zala's voice in his head over and over was what contributed most to the latter.

_Negotiate with the soccer team to make them behave in proper conduct,_ Yzak thought. _Like I actually need to negotiate with anyone._

On his way back to the committee room he stopped by the vending machine and dropped a few coins into the slot. Coffee first, deal with idiots later.

Dearka showed up by his side shortly after Yzak had picked up the coffee cup.

"So what assignment did they land on us today?" Dearka asked, having read the expression on Yzak's face and been able to differentiate between his normally cranky friend and his cranky friend with an assignment.

"Negotiate with the captain of the soccer team," Yzak muttered, walking down the corridor. "Make sure that what happened last year won't happen again."

Dearka followed him.

"You mean that fight last year?"

Yzak nodded and drank a mouthful of the coffee. He nearly spit it out but controlled his reflex just in time and forced himself to swallow it. A cold shiver ran down his back even though the coffee was still hot. The coffee tasted like metal, not surprising considering where it came from. Still, Yzak forced himself to take another sip of the coffee. Good or not, he needed the caffeine to get through this Tuesday.

After a few minutes of walking he and Dearka arrived at the soccer field. The whole team was already out there, right in the middle of practise. Watching the team members missing the ball because they were half asleep made Yzak wonder if Tuesday mornings were as bad for them as they were for him. But just a little.

"Hey!"

Yzak looked to his left to see the captain of the soccer team, Felix Sorensen, jogging towards them, drenched in sweat from head to toe. Both Yzak and Dearka instinctively took a long step backwards as Felix approached them. The latter didn't seem to take offense though, if he even noticed it in between swallowing half a bottle of water.

"Nice to see you guys out here for once," Felix said, emptying the other half of the bottle of his head and proceeding to splash it all over the place like a dog. "Thinking about joining?"

"You wish," Yzak retorted. "We're here to make sure you guys don't pull the same stunt as you did last year."

Despite towering over them with at least five inches, Felix seemed to shrink when he heard what Yzak had said.

"Now listen, last year wasn't exactly my fault…" he began uncertainly.

"You're the captain of the team and the entire soccer club," Yzak reminded sharply. "It's your job to make sure your teammates behave. And as far as I can remember I think soccer was more trying to kick the ball into the goal than body slamming the other team's mascot."

"But you know how it is!" Felix pleaded. "Georgie is such a great mascot and always brings snacks and stuff for all of us at practise… her brother is on the team and when he heard the other team making fun of her costume he just couldn't help himself! We really care about each other in the team and for them to make fun of Georgie, well, we…"

"Your mascot is freaking chicken, literally!" Yzak cut off. "You can't tell me that it was the first time someone made fun of that!"

When Felix looked like he had no idea what Yzak was talking about, Yzak just sighed and finished the rest of his coffee. God, it was awful.

"Whatever, just keep your team in check this year," Yzak went on. "If I hear you do anything out of line I'll arrange for the entire team to wash the fencing team's equipment for three months. If you guys think your stuff stinks, then you'll be in for a surprise."

Not looking but knowing that what he had said had terrified Felix, Yzak turned around and left. He threw the coffee cup over his shoulder and it fell perfectly into a trash can. Dearka followed and the two of them went back inside the school building.

Sticking his hands into his pockets, Yzak seriously thought about assigning punishments to everyone participating in the school festival before it even started. The festival was the only time of the school year that students could plan on their own and needless to say it was the only time of the school year that was considered fun. But with fun came a whole lot of general mayhem and as usual he was going to be the one held responsible if something went wrong.

"Hey," Dearka said as they reached the corridor leading back to the committee room. "I gotta tell you something."

Though he would rather die and go to hell twice before admitting it, it was times like these that Yzak was grateful to have Dearka in the disciplinary committee. As much work as the student festival was, at least he did not have to deal with it alone.

"I've joined the school newspaper!"

Two people working together was always better than one person working alone and… wait, stop, rewind.

"What!" Yzak exclaimed in disbelief, stopping right in the middle of the corridor.

"I've joined the school newspaper," Dearka repeated, smiling as if this was his only chance to do so. "Milly told me that they had a spot open so I said I'd join!"

Yzak just stared at him, still doubting that he had heard him right. The fact that he had heard him right was confirmed by Dearka looking like he had just won the lottery. As the information sank in, Yzak could only do what he did best.

Speak. Loudly.

"Why the HELL did you do that for!" Yzak yelled so suddenly that a girl walking by jumped and dropped her books. "Right before the SCHOOL FESITVAL!"

"Relax, I'm not quitting entirely," Dearka assured. He put his hands up in front of him, either to urge Yzak to calm down or to shield himself in case Yzak would decide to physically attack him. "I just have to do some work at the newspaper once in a while. They even gave me my own advice column: Dear Dearka!"

Yzak was truly torn and conflicted. He did not know whether to be upset with his friends for joining the newspaper at a time like this or to feel sad because "Dear Dearka" was the best name that the creative minds at this school could come up with. In the end he decided to be neither and just grumpy instead. Frowning deeply and putting on a sour look to let Dearka know that he was definitely not happy, he resumed walking towards the committee room.

"You owe me for this," he muttered. "You so owe me."

"I guess I'll just call it even for that time I didn't tell the principal who really kicked down the door to the chemistry lab," Dearka said with a grin.

Yzak glared at Dearka intensely but somehow managed to just push the door open rather than kick it, despite that today was yet another awful Tuesday. He was about to bring up something to remind Dearka that he owed him, but could not come up with something. Instead he looked up and saw that there was already someone else in the room.

At first he thought that he was just imagining it, but his phase with imaginary friends had only lasted about two days when he was four. But what he saw was Shiho standing in the room, examining the buzzing refridgerator as if trying to figure out why it wouldn't stop buzzing. She turned around as she noticed that she was being stared at but frankly Yzak could not help it. Even Dearka looked surprised to see her in there. No one ever came into the committee room willingly, not unless you were Yzak, Dearka or trying to be a juvenile delinquent. Even student council members tended to stay in the corridor or by the door if they had something to say. So what the hell was she doing in here?

"They told me that you guys are usually in here so I figured that I'd wait until you came back," Shiho said casually.

"Okay," Yzak answered almost dumbly, thinking that it did not explain at all why she had come in the first place. Had she been sent here because of another fight?

"Here."

Shiho reached over and handed Yzak a piece of paper. He accepted it and took a quick look at it. It was a document with her full name, birthdate, adress, student ID and all the other basic information that he didn't give a damn about.

"What's this?"

"My application. I want to join the disciplinary committee."

Yzak blinked, his mind trying to make sense of what she had just said. Just one week ago she had been sitting here after having started a fight and refused to tell Yzak anything. Now she wanted to join and help out? It did not make any sense.

Dearka, however, seemed to have no problem at all accepting her. He had already stepped forward to shake Shiho's hand and tell her that she could not have joined them at a better time. Yzak glared at him.

_If that he thinks he's getting away with quitting on me because she wants to join, then he's wrong._

"You can't just join like that," Yzak said after taking another look at the document. "You have to get approval from a teacher and the student council…"

"Oh, the signatures are on the other side."

Looking at the other side of the document, he found two signatures scribbled at the bottom. Sure enough, there was a signature from Mr Ghani and…

_Bastard._

…Athrun Zala of the student council.

"Looks good enough for me," Dearka approved, having peered over Yzak's shoulder and taken a look at the signatures.

Shiho smiled at him.

"My class starts in five minutes so I have to go," she said, picking up her book bag from the floor. "I'll see you guys later."

While Yzak kept staring at the signatures, Dearka waved goodbye as Shiho left the room. Once she was gone, he took the opportunity to slap Yzak on his back.

"Guess you'll be doing just fine without my help," he grinned.

Ignoring him, Yzak turned around and rushed to get out of the room and back into the corridor. He looked around to see if she was still there and caught sight of her just as she was about to disappear into the crowd.

"Shiho!"

Shiho turned around, looking mildly surprised to see him coming after her. He pushed past others to get to her, nearly trampling over a short first year in the process. When he did get to her, the first thing he did was hold her application up right in front of her face.

"What's this?" he asked bluntly. "Why do you want to join the committee?"

Shiho looked back and forth between the application and him, not answering at first. Yzak did not take his eyes off her the entire time, noticing how suddenly she seemed so uncertain of what to say and most of all uncertain of herself. It was as if she was still trying to figure out the answer to the question he had asked.

"I guess… I owe it to you for being a convincing speaker," she replied after a while. "There was no disciplinary committee at my old school, I didn't know what it was when I came here. But after what you said about being in it… how could I not join?"

The answer was sufficient enough, yet Yzak did not doubt for a second that there was more to it than what she had said. Still, for some reason he felt that it was enough for know. She smiled at him, he was not sure why, before leaving him to go to class again. He watched her slowly walk away from him, his mind suddenly full of questions to which he wanted an answer.

What had she meant by that? Why had she found him so convincing? What did she want? Who was she?

"Hey!" he called out, not really knowing he did until afterwards.

Once again, Shiho stopped, turned around and looked at him. Yzak swallowed.

"Are you still not going to tell me why you started that fight?"

Their eyes met for what appeared to be an eternity. Then something changed, Shiho smiled again but this time he could see it reaching her eyes.

"Maybe. Someday."

With that short answer she turned away from him and walked away again. This time Yzak let her but he kept watching her until she had gone to the other end of the corridor and there were too many other students blocking his view. Even then he did not move and several people walking by noticed how he looked a little dazed and that his mouth was slightly open.

But he paid no attention to them. Even when Shiho was long gone, he kept staring forwards, lost in his own thoughts. No questions answered, he did not know more about her than he did last week after sending her off with cleaning duty as punishment. But for some reason, it did not matter much.

After all, he had time to find out.


	2. Her efforts

**His and her reasons  
Chapter 2: Her efforts**

_Notes: Here's the second chapter, more notes at the end!_

---

A car drove by.

Her eyes fluttered open as she awoke to that sound. For a few brief moments, she felt panic rising within her. The sheets and pillows did not smell like they were supposed to. The ceiling and the walls were painted in light blue and white. There was too much light coming in through the windows. It was not supposed to be like this, the sun didn't shine on this side of the house in the morning.

But those few moments passed eventually. She began to remember where she was and found herself relaxing into the warmth of the bed. The smell, the colors and the light grew less menacing though still not entirely familiar. The room returned to being what it was and what it was supposed to be, light, relaxing and neutral.

Shiho buried her face into the pillow, wishing to stay a little longer in this room where it felt like nothing could touch her and she could touch no one. But the alarm clock rung only a few minutes later, the sound of it forcing her to awaken fully. Turning it off with a sigh, she threw the covers off and headed into the bathroom.

On her way there she walked by photographs hanging on the wall. Oceans, beaches, sky… even the photographs were the same as the room. There were no people in the pictures, no one to relate to and recognize. She had certainly not picked them and the only impressions she got from the pictures were that they had been picked out because of their neutrality. Everyone liked beaches and oceans. If anything, it was the pictures that reminded her of her status in the household. More than a guest but less than a member.

After taking a quick shower, she quickly got dressed. The white shirt, black knee-length skirt and the navy blazer was a part of the school uniform used in spring. But looking out the window she saw clouds and just to be safe she put on a pair of black tights. Once she was completely dressed, she took a few seconds to look at herself at the full length mirror. It was strange how this school uniform was different from the one at Europa, yet she hardly felt the change. They were more lenient with uniforms at Rousseau, she did not even have to wear a tie.

Shaking her head, Shiho turned away from the mirror. She walked over to the door leading to the hallway, took a deep breath and told herself that she was ready to face the world.

The kitchen was already bustling with activity when she came downstairs. At least as much activity as three people could muster. An energetic four year old boy was running around the table, sporting a milk moustache and only one sock. Following this boy was his father, looking more panicked and desperate for each second that passed that he could not get the boy to stay still and get dressed properly.

The smell of bacon reached her nostrils and instinctively Shiho moved towards the stove. She lowered the heat and flipped the bacon before they had a chance to burn. The father noticed her and took a little time off chasing his son.

"Ah, thanks for doing that," he sighed gratefully, having forgotten all about the bacon.

"No problem, uncle Cooper," Shiho answered, forcing herself to return a smile.

But the smile went unnoticed, Cooper had scooped up the little boy in his arms and was working on getting the socks on. Rafe, as the boy was named, was clearly not in the mood for socks as he kicked them off as quickly as Cooper got them on.

Sitting in the middle of this, by the kitchen table and with the business section of the newspaper, was Cooper's wife and Rafe's mother. Or cousin Anja, which Shiho mostly though of her as. Though not closely related, sometimes it scared Shiho to see the resemblance between her mother and Anja. The red hair was there, as well as the always graceful and elegant demeanour, not to mention the proud way she carried herself. Anja was thirty-five years old and it was common knowledge within the Hahnenfuss family that she was the most successful at her age. She had recently been made partner in a law firm and was quickly becoming known as one of the best lawyers in the country. It was why Shiho saw more of Cooper, who was a freelance writer, than Anja.

The bacon was done. Serving the bacon on a plate and grabbing an apple from the fruit basket on her way, Shiho sat down to join Anja at the table. The latter hardly noticed her sitting there, being completely busy with reading a column of some sort. Rather than disturbing her, Shiho quietly reached for a slice of bread and started buttering it.

"I'll be home late tonight," Anja announced, putting aside the newspaper. "This lawsuit is turning out to be much more difficult than I had anticipated. Can you pick up Rafe from kindergarten?"

Perhaps it was because Anja was so used to having only Cooper and Rafe around the house, but even when she spoke without addressing anyone it was clear that she was only talking to Cooper.

"I don't know, the editor was really adamant about me working full hours today," Cooper answered, finally getting Rafe dressed and let him go. "I've been taking so many hours off here and there…"

"Cooper, you only have to take another hour off to take him to the daycare center," Anja persisted.

"I know, but…"

"This is a really important case I'm working on," Anja went on. "I haven't just risked my own reputation by taking it on, I've risked the company's as well. Please, I really need to get some work done today."

Feeling as if she was completely invisible in the room, Shiho found herself wanting them to ask her to do it instead. She opened her mouth to offer it but at the same time Cooper finally gave in.

"Okay, I'll do it. It's during my lunch hour anyway."

Looking extremely pleased with herself and the resolution, Anja got up and gave her husband a quick kiss on the lips.

"Thanks, I'll make it up to you some other time."

Instead of sitting down again, Anja looked at her watch and frowned.

"Oh, I have to go now. I'll see you later tonight!"

She kissed both Cooper and Rafe and Shiho practically expected her to rush out the door right away. But instead Anja suddenly turned to her and Shiho almost felt struck by having Anja's eyes on her.

"Do you need a ride to school?" Anja asked. "It's on my way to work anyway."

Shiho's first instinct was to decline the offer. She and Anja hardly knew each other and she'd be more comfortable walking or taking the bus to school. But she found herself willing to accept the offer for the same reasons. She had lived with Anja and her family for almost two weeks now and did not feel as if she knew them better than she did when she saw them once a year.

"Sure," Shiho answered and got up, forgetting that her breakfast was only half eaten.

She rushed upstairs to get her bag and then rushed downstairs to meet Anja in the hallway. After saying goodbye to Cooper and Rafe again, they left out of the house.

Anja's car reflected everything about her, it was expensive, elegant and somehow made one feel like one did not quite belong there with them. The last part especially, proved by the fact that neither Anja or Shiho had spoken since she had accepted the offer. As the car drove down the road, past houses and parks, Shiho desperately tried to think of something to say. But no topic seemed appropriate enough to talk to Anja about. The last thing Shiho wanted to do was to annoy her cousin by making small talk just for the sake of it. Either Anja was comfortable with the silence or she could not come up with anything to say either, because she made no attempt to start a conversation. Perhaps she was one of those who did not like talking while driving. The only thing that they could hear was the silent rumblings from the engines and the sound of other cars driving by.

Due to a minor traffic jam at the main road, they arrived at the school twenty minutes later when it should have taken half the time. As Anja drove her car up to the front gate and then stopped, Shiho picked up her bag.

"Thanks for giving me a ride," she said, turning in her seat to look to Anja. "I'll see you tonight."

"Wait, hold on," Anja murmured just as Shiho had reached to open the door.

Anja grabbed her purse from the back seat and rummaged through it quickly. A few seconds later she found her wallet and took out a couple of bills. Shiho just stared at her dumbly when Anja offered her them.

"Lunch money for this week," Anja explained. "Cooper and I aren't exactly the homemaker types so we don't exactly pack lunches."

"No, that's alright," Shiho answered, shaking her head slightly. "My parents… they send me a little pocket money each month…"

"I know, but you live with Cooper and me now," Anja persisted. "I know your parents send you money but that's your pocket money. And this isn't much money to argue over, just enough for lunch the rest of the week."

Not quite daring to talk back against Anja, Shiho did not say anything. But she looked at the money hesitantly and really did not want to take it.

"Consider it a replacement for lunch boxes. I insist."

Even though there was what could be seen as a smile on Anja's lips, there was something in her eyes and voice that told Shiho that this discussion had ended with Anja being the winner. Smiling back with a bit of uncertainty, Shiho reached out and accepted the money.

"…thank you."

"You're welcome. See you tonight at home."

Nodding, Shiho opened the car door and stepped outside. After saying goodbye, she closed the door and watched it drive away from her. Once it was gone, she looked down at her hands. Bag filled with books in one hand, money in the other.

It was strange that she could not tell which one felt the heaviest.

---

_The Disciplinary Committee _

_Dedicated to informing and encouraging enforcement of rules and regulations at Rousseau Academy. The disciplinary committee has been a fine example of how students can learn cooperation and how to handle and solve conflicts._

…dedicated to informing and encouraging enforcement of rules and regulations…

The line stood out to Shiho somehow. It came from a pamphlet she had received the morning of her first day at Rousseau, one describing various clubs and committees at the school. At that time the only impression she got from the text was that it consisted of a few people posting up the rules on the message boards.

She had been really wrong.

She had been a member of the disciplinary committee for four days now, six if weekends counted. During that time she had mostly followed Yzak and Dearka around, watching them work to get a hang of things. Their concept for the disciplinary committee was easy enough: Find someone who's causing trouble and make him or her suffer for it. While it did show some results, Shiho was convinced that there was a better way of enforcing the rules than scare the life of anyone who broke them.

The tactics employed by the committee were largely due to Yzak Jule. Dearka hardly had to do any work whenever something came up, Yzak would somehow handle it using his less than good temper. Shiho had not forgotten the way he had treated her when she had first met him and though she held no grudges, Yzak's temper was not helping the committee's reputation. People had began to walk away from her in fear, just because she had been seen with Yzak.

_Informing and encouraging_, she thought to herself.

And that was what she was going to do.

As she sat in the committee room, waiting for the others to arrive, she made a decision.

Today she was going to try her best.

"…I don't need a date!"

"Everyone needs a date! No one goes to the spring concert alone!"

"Says the person who got turned down by Miriallia Haww for the third time this year."

"Hey, I'm working on that!"

Yzak and Dearka came in through the door, discussing wildly about something Shiho could not follow. But the discussion ended almost as soon as they came in, for some reason Yzak went completely quiet when he saw her.

Choosing not ask why, Shiho just stood up to face him.

"So what's in store for today?" she asked.

She was going to try her best today. Hopefully she would succeed, get something done because then…

"A lot," Yzak answered. He pulled out a notepad from his bag and started to flip the pages. "The school festival starts tomorrow, we have to make sure everything is set. Dearka, you take this."

Yzak tore out page from his notepad and gave it to Dearka. Then he flipped a few more pages, tore out another page and gave it to Dearka as well. He tore out several pages next, putting them on the table before him. Shiho assumed that those were reserved for him. All the pages Yzak tore out ended up either with Dearka or in Yzak's own stack. By the time he closed the notepad, he had given none to Shiho.

"Okay, get to work," Yzak ordered.

"Where's the list for the school newspaper?" Dearka asked, looking through each task list he had received.

"There isn't one." Yzak rolled his eyes and headed out the door. "It's not like you need one to get closer to that girl, you're already working for the school newspaper!"

Dearka followed shortly afterwards, leaving Shiho alone in the committee room none wiser than before. In fact she was at loss on whether she was supposed to stay in the room or do something else. Biting her lip, she decided to follow and rushed out of the room to catch with the others.

When she came out to the corridor, she was nearly overrun by students from the drama club, carrying a Christmas tree for some reason. Jumping backwards and dodging them, Shiho looked back and forth in hopes of catching sight of either Dearka or Yzak. But the corridor was packed with people, running between classrooms, through the corridor or just shouting orders to someone out the window. Apparently the school was like this every year, a few days before the festival classes would be cancelled so that students could prepare the activities.

Standing on her toes to see better, Shiho caught sight of a silver head making his way through the crowd. She followed, zigzagging around and trying to not run into anyone.

"Hey," Shiho said breathlessly when she finally caught up with Yzak. "Wait up."

When he didn't notice her, she reached out to touch his shoulder. Her fingertips had hardly made contact with his shirt when Yzak suddenly pulled away as if he had been burnt. He pulled away so quickly that he nearly stumbled backwards into the wall. There was a strange look in his eyes when he saw that it was her, but Shiho just added that to the list of weird things that made up Yzak Jule. Needless to say, he was not exactly like anyone else she had met before.

"What is it!" Yzak snapped, regaining his composure.

"I was just trying to catch up with you," Shiho answered and could not help but to think that he was extremely odd. "You didn't see me coming?"

"Well, I do now," he muttered and walked on.

Shiho followed him as he went up the stairs, not sure where he was going or what he was going to do. She saw that Yzak was still holding the stack of lists that he had torn out of his notepad earlier. It puzzled her as to why Dearka had received a few lists of his own and she hadn't. After all, she was a member of the disciplinary committee as well, her application had been approved the day she had handed it in.

"Hey…"

Yzak acknowledged her by glancing quickly at her. Shiho forced a smile to her lips, hoping that it might make him be slightly less… hostile.

"Dearka is off on his own for now, right?" she asked. "It's more efficient if you guys split up and take care of separate things, isn't it?"

In one sudden move Yzak jumped up and past her, startling her to the point where she nearly fell backwards. Instinctively she reached out her arm for something to hold on to and felt great relief when her hand grabbed onto the railing. Her mind had barely processed that when she found herself looking up at Yzak. He had jumped up a few steps and stood right before her, blocking her path. Then he leaned down just a little, practically towering over her.

He was looking down at her from where he stood, his sharp blue eyes staring directly into hers. Shiho almost felt intimidated or threatened by it, it was like he was looking for something when he stared at her.

"And the sun rises in the east and sets in the west," Yzak suddenly said. "Quit saying stuff that are so obvious that a monkey could figure them out, what do you want?"

Temporarily forgetting what she had been thinking about in the first place, Shiho closed her eyes for a second and forced herself to think.

"I'm a member of the committee too," she answered and opened her eyes again. "Why didn't I get any assignments?"

He stood up straight, creating a little more distance between the two of them. For some reason, Shiho had no idea whether that was good or bad. She tried to read his eyes and his face expression for some kind of indicator for what he was feeling, but they were blank. Was it such a sensitive question she had asked anyway? If anything he should appreciate her offer to do more work.

Just as the last part crossed her mind, she felt the weight of a paper stack against her head.

"What the…"

Looking up, she saw that Yzak's expression had changed, from blank to a deep frown.

"That's because you're going with me," Yzak explained. "Your assignment is to hold this stack for me. God, why am I surrounded by such idiots…"

Releasing his hold on the stack, Shiho reacted quickly and tried to catch it before it fell. Half of the lists ended up in her hands, the other flying all over the place and ended up scattered around the stair case. Shiho automatically sank to her knees and started to pick them up while Yzak just continued up the stairs. She nearly dropped her jaw in shock as he even put his hands in his pockets and looked like he was about to whistle.

_The nerve of him!_ Shiho thought to herself, her cheeks starting to burn slightly and her eyes narrowing.

She gathered all the list quickly, bringing them all together in a messy pile that she scooped up in her arms. Carrying all the lists, she then raced up the stairs to catch up with Yzak. There was no way she was going to let him walk all over her!

"I'm not an idiot!"

It was the first thing she said when she practically jumped in front of him, just as he had earlier. The difference between then and now was that Yzak didn't seem fazed at all while Shiho was glaring at him intensely. Who was he to treat her this way, even if he was the head of the committee and she just a member?

"I'm not," Shiho clarified and was about to say something more, but she did not think it was appropriate to use that particular word when referring to someone who was technically her superior.

If there was anything that she thought defined Yzak Jule, it was the look he constantly bore on his face. It was a look of annoyance, as if the whole world was somehow against him or that he was the only sane person in the place. Of course, it varied depending on the situation. Over the past week Shiho had noticed that Yzak looked less annoyed when he was with Dearka or by himself, most annoyed when around members of the student council.

In the particular situation, Yzak looked somewhere in the middle and made it somewhat difficult for Shiho to figure out his reaction. Then, rather than answering her, he just pulled out one of the lists that she carried. It was all scrunched up but he unfolded it and read the words written on it quickly.

Ignoring what she had said completely and without bothering to tell her what was on the list, Yzak scrunched the list into a ball and threw it over his shoulder. It landed in a trash can that Shiho didn't even know was there.

"You can stand around here all day if you want, but I got work to do," Yzak said in an almost bored voice.

He then stepped aside and walked just right past her.

Shiho did not move. She knew that she probably should, that Yzak was right by saying that they had work to do. But for some reason she could not get herself to move an inch. There was a rather odd feeling in her stomach, as if her insides were tying together a series of complicated knots.

It was just one thing, one tiny little thing… But when he had walked past her and gone on without her, she felt left behind, invisible.

Like she was not even there.

---

"Is he always like this?"

Dearka raised the soda can halfway towards his mouth.

"Who? Yzak?" he asked.

Shiho nodded. The two of them were sitting together underneath a tree at the courtyard, having lunch together. After Yzak had left her standing in the corridor, she had walked around trying to find him. It was not until she bumped into Dearka that she realized how much time she had spent looking for him. Since it was lunch time, Dearka coaxed her into eating lunch with him, just to take a break from running around school.

"Depends on what you mean," Dearka answered and drank from the soda can. "If you mean high strung and likely to blow up without warning, then yes."

"But why?" Shiho questioned. She put aside what was left of the sandwich that she had bought at the cafeteria. "I mean someone can't walk around being that angry all the time, right?"

Dearka chuckled, nearly choking on the soda and causing a premature death in the process. Shiho just stared at him, she did not understand what was so funny.

"He's not…" Dearka began but stopped in the middle to as he started to cough. Shiho patted his back, more to show her sympathy than thinking that she was actually helping him.

She had not known Dearka for long and rarely had a chance to talk to him one on one but there was something very charming about him. He was easy to get along with and unlike Yzak, Shiho actually felt relaxed and comfortable around him.

"Anyway…" Dearka coughed one last time. "He's not angry _all the time_. It's just what he's like. Part of his… charm."

Shiho raised an eyebrow.

"Charm?"

"Well, you get what I mean."

She really had no idea what Dearka was talking about but figured that she would leave the discussion at that. There was nothing about Yzak Jule that could be described as charming. After all, half of the school ran away from him in terror. Unless the matter was his looks, she did have to admit that he did look quite good.

"Where have you been!"

A dark figure approached, blocking the light from the sun and casting a dark shadow over her. Looking up, Shiho gasped and immediately jumped up to her feet. She was not sure exactly why she reacted this way but having Yzak's pair of blazing, hard eyes glaring down made her automatically assume that she had done something wrong.

"I was looking for you," she explained quickly. "I've been looking all over school but they told me that you kept running between different places…"

"That's because I was working," Yzak answered coldly and crossed his arms. "Unlike someone else."

The feeling of having to apologise going away rather quickly, Shiho crossed her arms as well and glared right back at Yzak.

"I would have done something of my own if a certain someone had allowed me to do that in the first place," she shot back. "And relying on your notes wasn't exactly possible."

Despite her dislike of the way Yzak spoke to her, at least that part was true. She had tried doing some of the assignments of her own but in the end she had been unable to. With Yzak's assignment descriptions weren't the most elaborate ones that gave clear directions on what needed to be done. Most of them were in the lines of: _Music club - Talk to Lacus. or Soccer club - Girl that looks like a boy needs to stop her war against the cheerleaders._

"Dearka can read them just fine," Yzak retorted.

Both Shiho and Yzak turned to Dearka, hoping for some backup. But the latter sensed trouble brewing and got up quickly.

"Well, I gotta check on the drama club… need to talk about audience regulations," Dearka spoke quickly. "See you later!"

Before either of them could say anything, Dearka was already halfway back into the building. As much as Shiho had counted on him as a backup, she couldn't blame him for not wanting to take a side.

Still watching Dearka walking away from them, Shiho gasped as she suddenly felt her wrist being grabbed. Looking up, she met Yzak's eyes briefly before he pulled her up on her feet. He pulled with such force that Shiho nearly lost her balance and practically stumbled onto him. The tip of her nose touched his jaw just slightly before she regained control of herself. His other hand reached up and touched her shoulder briefly as if wanting to help her maintain her balance.

For a few moments, or even seconds, while they stood there, she felt as if she was on fire and ice cold at the same time. There was a strange feeling in her stomach that she did not recognize and her entire arm seemed to almost relax in his hold.

A single leaf flew by.

Releasing the breath she did not know that she had been holding, Shiho broke away. Yzak's hold on her loosened and her wrist slid easily out of his grip. Shiho took a step back, pretending to look down at her shoes to hide her reddening face.

"What was that for?" she forced herself to ask, determined to not look at Yzak.

"We need to get to work," Yzak snapped quickly. "Let's go!"

Rather than walking off and expecting her to follow, he remained where he was and waited for her. Shiho didn't dare to face him directly, there was something about the way he looked at her that made her feel as if he was looking to find something. But whatever it was, it was not important now.

She gathered her things and the stack of lists which she had sorted, organized and put into different folders. She noticed Yzak glancing at the folders but he didn't say anything.

"Shall we go?" she asked.

---

One by one they dealt with all the different assignments, issues and clubs at the school. Shiho discovered quite soon that diplomacy was not a word that existed in Yzak Jule's vocabulary.

The first issue was with the fencing club. Shiho couldn't tell much from Yzak's notes but once the two of them arrived at the fencing hall, but the tension she felt upon entering convinced her that this was a serious matter. She would have continued to believe so, had the members of the fencing club not been polite and nice to her from the moment they noticed her. They had made tea and offered her homemade cookies.

Visiting the fencing club would have been a very pleasant event, if one disregarded the fact that Yzak kept yelling at the captain.

"I don't care what you say! The regulations are clear! No more than fifty people are allowed in the fencing hall!"

"But that would defeat the purpose of the fencing tournament!" the captain, who Shiho vaguely remembered as Athrun of the student council, argued back. Though he had started out speaking normally, Yzak's yelling had gotten to him and he was raising his voice as well. "The tournament has twenty participants, if you add our instructor and everyone else in the club it just leaves room for ten people in the audience!"

"Well, that's not exactly my problem, isn't it?" Yzak grinned sadistically. "I'm just doing my job like the student council tells me too."

No one was sure who did it first, but when it came to the point where both Yzak and Athrun armed themselves with foils, the other club members jumped in to restrain them.

That was why twenty minutes later Yzak had been dragged to an empty classroom and was pacing back and forth, grumbling incoherent words. Shiho was not sure why, but she guessed that it had something to do with the fact that the entire fencing club had been in his way of fighting Athrun Zala.

"What do you have against the fencing club anyway?" Shiho asked, looking at Yzak strangely. "Or Athrun Zala for that matter?"

"That incompetent idiot keeps beating me at everything," Yzak grumbled. "Fencing, running for head of the student council, chess, test results…"

Shiho was about to point out that he was insulting himself by saying that someone incompetent had managed to be better than him on so many things. But deciding that it was best to not risk angering Yzak anymore, she just smiled weakly and handed him the next folder.

Once he had calmed down enough, he took a look at his notes and the two of them left the classroom to deal with the next club. The engineering club seemed harmless enough on paper and Shiho wondered what they as the disciplinary committee would do there. But sure enough, Yzak found something that was wrong.

The engineering club room was little more than an old classroom in the basement with different gadgets and pieces of robotics spread all over the place. Shiho could hardly walk inside there without fearing that she might step on something that looked like junk but that some dedicated student had spent months building. Yzak, however, found no difficulty in walking around, pointing out that there were too many risks with displaying their work in this room. There were only two exits in the room, the risk of a fire starting was too great, they didn't have enough fans in the room and most of their robots were quite ugly.

Two boys, one brown haired with striking violet eyes and the other with sandy blonde hair and wearing colored glasses, eagerly tried to defend their work but Yzak's mind was set. By the time he and Shiho left the room, the two boys were looking at a list of thirteen things they needed to do before getting Yzak's approval at the end of the day.

"Aren't you being a little harsh?" Shiho questioned carefully. "No one's eyes are going to fall out just because their robots doesn't have… aesthetic value."

Yzak just dismissed her comment with a light wave of his hand and walked on. Shiho stayed a few steps behind him, partially because then he wouldn't see the face she made. Why was he being so unwilling to compromise?

Ten minutes later they came to the outdoor stage, where the music club was practising for their festival concert. They did not stop when Shiho and Yzak entered, instead two members of the club came to greet him. One was the green haired boy who was in the student council, Nicol. Shiho remembered seeing the other one, a girl with long and flowing pink hair, with the student council as well but she had not talked to her before.

"Nice to see you here Yzak," the girl smiled when she approached them. Her voice was soft and gentle and she seemed to genuinely mean those words. It surprised Shiho, considering most people's reaction upon seeing Yzak. What surprised her even more was that the girl turned to her next. "I don't think we've been introduced. My name is Lacus Clyne, I'm the head of the music club."

Lacus reached out her hand. Shiho, feeling a little embarrassed because of the stack of folders she was forced to carry around, shuffled all of them onto her left arm and shook Lacus' hand.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Shiho Hahnenfuss," she presented. "I just joined the disciplinary committee."

"Ah, I see!"

Lacus smiled knowingly and when she looked at Yzak, he suddenly turned red.

"Let's get to work," he muttered, seemingly eager to change the subject.

Shiho just gave him another strange look and them followed him and Lacus to an area near the stage where a couple of chairs had been placed out. They sat down and started discussing the festival concert. The discussion was really between Yzak, Lacus and Nicol. Yzak kept talking about safety regulations and how to keep the outdoor areas clean. In return, Nicol and Lacus told him about different things they had done to try to keep the audience for littering during and after the concert.

Feeling a little out of the loop, Shiho struggled to keep up with what they said and take notes at the same time. For that matter she was glad that no one expected her to participate in this discussion and write everything down at the same time, but she could not help but to feel a twinge of annoyance at Yzak for not including her.

What was so wrong about letting her in anyway?

"Shiho?"

Looking up, Shiho found Yzak looking at her. The discussion had come to a halt and he was looking at her as if expecting something out of her. As confused about the discussion as she was, she could not help but to think that perhaps he was looking at her to get her opinion, to finally include her in his work…

But then he opened his mouth and ruined everything.

"Get me some coffee, will you?"

---

Biting her lip, Shiho shoved the coins into the vending machine. They clattered to the bottom of the machine, which began to make a low, growling sound that reminded her of a car that had been driven too fast too many times. Coffee poured out from the machine and into the paper cup.

_Get me some coffee…_ Shiho repeated to herself. _What am I, his secretary?_

Feeling less than pleased with Yzak, Shiho yanked the cup from the machine once it was full. Some of the coffee splashed over, burning her thumb. Quickly switching the coffee cup to her other hand, Shiho brought her burnt thumb to her lips. God, that coffee had been hot, not to mention it tasted awful.

Sucking on her thumb gingerly, Shiho turned around to go back to the club room.

"Hey, pass it to me!"

Hearing voices, Shiho looked up just in time to raise her arm and swat away a basket ball flying towards her. The ball slammed against the wall, bounced twice on the floor before a pair of hands caught it.

Standing ahead of her were a group of boys. Shiho didn't recognize any of them but from what she could tell they looked like they were first years. The one who had caught the ball smiled apologetically at her.

"Sorry 'bout that!"

Without waiting for her to answer or accept his apology, he turned back to his friends and passed the basket ball to someone else. Shiho was about to continue towards the club room but looking at the boys playing around reminded her of one of the rules that was in effect at this school. Playing or practising sports inside the main school building was strictly prohibited.

She didn't move and watched the group of boys. There were six of them, dribbling and passing the ball amongst themselves with no intention of playing anywhere else except for this corridor. There was no doubt that they were breaking the rule.

Sighing, Shiho wondered if the first years could possibly be so clueless to think that playing indoors was allowed. She would have to tell them to stop, perhaps with a little luck they'd just head outside instead and she wouldn't have to hand out any punishments.

"Hey…" she started, a little unsure of what to say.

None of them boys reacted and they probably hadn't heard her. They kept on playing and the ball flew dangerously into the direction of a display case. Shiho instinctively stepped forward and opened her mouth to warn them. But just before the ball struck the glass, one of the first years caught it and passed it back towards his friends.

Shiho bit her bottom lip again. She had never done this on her own before, just followed Yzak and Dearka around as they, or mostly Yzak, walked around and disciplined others.

"Excuse me," she said, raising her voice a little. "You're not allowed to play indoors!"

Once again her words went unheard. The first years merely laughed off the fact that they had nearly destroyed a display case that held all the medals the fencing team was so proud of, before they resumed playing. Shiho drew a deep breath.

"Hey!"

They still didn't react, didn't acknowledge her. It was like they hadn't even heard what she had said, like they didn't see her. To them, she wasn't there at all.

She opened her mouth to try again, but the words got stuck in her throat.

But she heard them speak, heard them tease each other playfully and the sound of the ball bouncing against the floor echoed through her mind. She heard them loud and clear, as if they were shouting into her ears. It was her own voice that she could not hear.

"HEY!"

She jumped, spilling more hot coffee over her hand. She caught sight of Yzak standing on the other side, glaring furiously at the first years as if he was on fire. They did not fail to notice him and the playing, the basket ball were quickly forgotten about as they stood there like frozen in time. The ball dropped to the floor and bounced a few times before rolling on the floor, stopping only a feet away from Yzak.

He picked it up, studying it silently. Though he did not say a word, yet everyone including Shiho were completely focused on him and waited for him to say something, do something. In the midst of all the waiting, it occurred to her how much of a presence Yzak had. He could arrive and everyone would see and hear him.

After a while Yzak walked up to the nearest boy. Despite that the boy was nearly three inches taller than Yzak, he trembled as Yzak approached him.

"If you imbeciles don't get out of my sight in five seconds, I'll make sure you are stuck scrubbing toilets until your graduation," Yzak threatened in a low voice. "And two years is a very long time. Have I made myself clear?"

Yzak threw the ball back at the taller boy but he and the others backed away from him like he was throwing explosives at him. At least it appeared that they had listened to his words, just a moment later all of them rushed past Shiho, ran around the corner and out of sight.

Shiho stood still, somehow she felt no different from before when the first years were still around and Yzak had not arrived. All the sounds seemed stronger, louder. Through the open window, she heard someone shouting out orders for others to carry the boxes to the stage. She heard every footstep that Yzak took as he approached her.

"The first years are always the easiest to scare," he grinned. "They still haven't discovered that I can't assign them any punishments that goes on for any longer than three months."

She heard him but she did not want to listen. This entire event, this entire day… it was too much, she couldn't handle this. Everything seemed to close around her, she felt pressure against her chest that she could not explain and suddenly breathing became more difficult. She couldn't stay here, she had to get away.

"Shiho?"

His voice bringing her back to reality, she turned her head to face him. There was no grin on his face, instead there was a look of concern. His eyes caught hers again and they looked into her as if wanting to search her, look straight into her mind.

And she couldn't handle it.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, taking Yzak's hand quickly and closing it around the coffee cup.

Then she turned around and ran away.

---

She didn't keep track of how long she lay there, but once she found a quiet place underneath a tree she decided just to sit there. It was on the courtyard but far enough for no one to disturb her. But then again, most people were too busy with the festival preparations to run around the courtyard.

It was a little windy, despite the sun the last cold of the winter had not left entirely yet. She felt the chill through her clothes and even shivered a little, but still lying outside provided her with a sense of calm that she did not want to give up. It reminded her of the feeling she got from being in her room at Anja's house. Here she was calm and untouchable.

But she didn't feel soothed. No matter how many leaves that flew by her, how much she stared at the clouds or how wonderful the grass felt against her body she could not keep the thoughts out of her mind. Everything was still in there, everything that had happened today and even things before that. Events replayed themselves in her mind and she did not know why she felt so confused and lost.

Sometime later, she didn't keep track of how long, she found that she was no longer alone. Yzak came and sat down next to her on the grass. She expected him to say something, to yell and ask what she was doing but instead he sat there in silence. When she glanced at him, she saw that he was not even looking at her but staring forward almost aimlessly. She didn't say anything to him either and kept her speculation to herself. Had he just happened to see her lying here as he was passing by or had he come with the intention of talking to her?

A stronger gust of wind rustled the grass.

"You're not feeling well," Yzak stated.

"No."

It felt strange to hear her own voice at that moment, it could almost be described as dull. She heard the grass rustling again as Yzak lay down, folding his arms and resting his head against them.

"It's like that in the beginning," Yzak suddenly said. "It takes time before people recognize you as a member of the disciplinary committee and take you seriously. That's why I wanted you to come with me today."

That explanation could have been sufficient enough. Yet as she lay there, Shiho could not help the questions that surfaced in her mind. What was it about Yzak Jule that made him so important, so noticeable? She couldn't understand why, all he did was look angry and raise his voice. What was it about him that made them listen to him, that made them see him?

"How do you do it?" she asked. "Have everyone listen to what you say without even trying? To walk around and be seen?"

"…don't be silly."

Shiho blinked and looked at Yzak.

"Huh?"

Yzak scoffed and turned his head away from her.

"I can see you just fine."

It all came to her at that moment. From the first time they had met, he had been watching her. Those first days she spent in loneliness, but he had seen her all the time. Earlier that morning as he had headed out of the committee room it was like he knew that she was going to follow. He was the one who had gone looking for her at lunch. During the meetings he never forgot that she was there. Even now as they lay almost side by side, she felt it.

His face was still turned away, but for some reason Shiho knew that to him there was no doubt that she was there with him. Whether she was within his sight or not, he knew that she was there. That simple fact, one that so many took for granted, put a smile on her face without her even knowing it.

"Hey…" she started, looking up at the clouds. "I kinda like that about you."

---

_Author's notes: I hope you guys are still reading, even though this chapter is somewhat different from chapter one, mostly in terms of the mood. Each chapter will alternate between Yzak's perspective and Shiho's perspective, as opposed to being told from a "bird's eye" view/perspective (quoting my old Swedish and litterature teacher here). Anyway, thanks for reading (and for all the lovely reviews!) and I'll be working on the next chapter._

**_Chapter 3: His feelings_**


	3. His feelings

**His and her reasons  
Chapter 3: His feelings**

Notes: I know, I've been really bad at updating. I blame real life as usual (if only writing fanfiction was a paid fulltime job…). I hope people are still around to read this, to make up for the lack of updates the past few months is an extra long chapter. I think this is actually the longest chapter I've written for any fanfic or story… anyway, thank you for the reviews for the previous chapter and hope you'll like this one too!

**---**

_"Hey… I kinda like that about you."_

What the hell was that supposed to mean?!

Yzak considered himself a pretty balanced person. He could handle different situations in life moderately well and even during stress could make rational and logical decisions. Of course, it would help if he wasn't surrounded by people who didn't understand him or were just plain stupid. Outbursts of rage and fury did happen occasionally, he had to admit that. But if one got rid of those factors, there was nothing that could stop Yzak from handling a new and challenging situation in a logical and effient manner.

That was, until Shiho Hahnenfuss told him that she liked him.

There were many analogies that could describe what he had felt upon hearing those fated words. One was, the first one that he came up with, like someone had poured a bucket of water and soap over him. The other was his body turning into solid ice. The one he thought came closest was that a plane had crashed on him, causing him to sink through the ground and all the way down to hell where someone promptly kicked him back to the world of the living because hell was already crowded enough.

But which analogy was best was not his biggest problem. The biggest problem was finding a way to handle this in an efficient and professional manner. He was, after all, technically her superior since she worked for the committee.

He thought about whether to share this information with Dearka or not, but seeing as Dearka had been little help lately he decided that it was best to keep this to himself. It was really the best solution to everything. He would not say anything to Shiho about this, just act as normal and the whole thing about her liking him would go away eventually.

That was why he had no problems going to the school festival with her. After all they were the only two committee members available to supervise it, Dearka was off covering the festival for the school newspaper.

"We have a lot of work to do," Yzak clarified once he and Shiho arrived at the gate to the school that afternoon. "It's just the two of us, we might even have to split up and do things seperately."

He had said the last part on impulse but after saying it he realized that it was a smart plan. Act as normal, but keep her away so that she doesn't get any ideas. It was hitting two birds with one stone.

But Shiho just nodded.

"Great, you're finally letting me do some committee work on my own," she replied.

Yzak could not believe his eyes, Shiho actually SMILED before walking past him and into the school grounds. He watched her going from where he stood, her long hair swishing back and forth as she walked on without a care in the world. What was up with that? Was she playing some kind of trick on him? Shouldn't she be a little upset or at least disappointed by splitting up with him?

Then it occurred to him what she was doing and he clenched his fist in anger. Reverse psychology, that had to be what she was doing. Well, he wasn't about to be fooled by something as simple as that. If she was trying to find a way to get to him, then she was wrong. He would be prepared. Narrowing his eyes, Yzak followed Shiho inside the school grounds.

The game was on.

---

_"Problems? We have no problems. Everything's just fine here!"_

_"Nah, I don't think we need any help… we're doing okay for now."_

_"Everything's great! There's no problem at all!"_

As the sun began to set, Yzak was on the verge of starting a brawl in the cafeteria just to have something to do. According to just about everyone and all the clubs, everything was running smoothly. No problems, nothing that needed to be brought to the disciplinary committee. Nothing to for them to do meant that there were very few moments that day that he and Shiho had to split up.

Yzak did not know what annoyed him most, that she was still around him or that he had brought it upon himself by making sure that everything had been perfectly prepared for the festival.

"So… what do we do now?"

He looked at Shiho who was leaning against a tree a few feet away from him. Whatever mask she had put on she was good at maintaining it, she did not look particularly tired, angry, sad, happy at all. In fact, had Yzak not known anything about the crush she had on him he would have said that she looked completely normal.

"Looks like there's no more work for us," Shiho went on.

Yzak stuck his hands in his pockets. He had to do something about this.

"Mmm."

"We still have two hours before the festival ends," Shiho reminded, checking her watch. "Wanna go do something?"

The feeling of water being splashed over him, his body freezing, a plane crashing or whatever it was came back again as he heard her question. But this time he reacted quicker and his mind already started to think of a solution to get out of this situation. She wanted them to go off somewhere by themselves and he had to avoid that no matter what the cost. He had to think of something fast, an excuse or something…

"Good evening everyone! Welcome to our concert!"

Though the stage was on the other side of the school, Lacus' voice was amplified by the speakers loud enough for both Yzak and Shiho to hear it.

At that moment Yzak felt as if he could kiss Lacus for saving him. The concert was the perfect place for them to go. He did not have to be heartless and told Shiho to go away but a concert with at least two hundred other people was the least intimate place that he could hope to find. Why hadn't he figured that out earlier?

"Let's go to the concert," Yzak suggested, speaking in a low voice in an attempt to not show that he was jubilant enough to do cartwheels. "In case the crowd starts throwing tomatoes or something at Amarfi."

He went into the direction of the stage and Shiho soon followed him. The two of them walked side by side without saying a single word. In the corner of his eye Yzak watched her, studied her face, eyes and overall expression. She was good at upholding her mask, he had to admit that. At the moment she looked like she didn't really care whether they were going to the concert or somewhere else.

Though the sun was setting and it was almost dark, all the light directed at the stage lit up almost the entire area. When Yzak and Shiho arrived, Lacus had already left the stage, in favor of three girls singing an upbeat song to liven up the audience for the rest of the show. Yzak eyed the area before the stage quickly. Several rows of benches had been placed out in front of the stage, all of them filled to the point where people had brought in extra chairs from the classrooms. It was not strange, considering that the concert was the main attraction of the festival.

"There are no seats left," Yzak stated.

Shiho just shrugged.

"We'll stand back here then," she answered. "We can see pretty good from here anyway."

That was good. Standing meant getting uncomfortable and tired after a while and nothing could happen when one was uncomfortable and tired, especially in a place with two hundred other people. Yzak almost smiled to himself, almost feeling safe again.

"Hey!"

Looking up upon hearing Dearka's voice, Yzak suddenly found himself blinded by pure, strong, white light. He instinctively shied away and shielded his face with his hands, feeling very much like an undead creature by doing that. But once the initial pain in his eyes was gone, he straightened up and saw Dearka standing in front of him with a camera with the biggest flash known to man.

"What the hell is that?!" Yzak hissed.

"A camera, they're letting me write a special just for the festival," Dearka told him proudly. "It's gonna be called: Five Festival Funs!"

Shiho rubbed her eyes, having been blinded by the flash as well.

"That's great, Dearka…" she started hesistantly. "But why did you take a picture of us?"

"Because you're a part of Festival Fun #3," Dearka explained, smirking deviously. "Gotta go now, see you guys on Monday if I'm not too busy editting this!"

Dearka was gone as usual before Yzak had the chance to stop him. He watched Dearka disappear into the crowd, occasionally snapping pictures of people.

"Why did I just get a bad feeling about this?" Shiho said, turning her eyes from where Dearka had stood to Yzak.

Yzak, however, did not look back at her. Minimum eye contact was essential for this too work. Looking at her too much could give Shiho the wrong impression. Instead he crossed his arms, said nothing and looked towards the stage.

Much to his relief, the three girls on stage soon finished their song and left the stage after receiving some undeserved applauses.

"I think it's Lacus' turn," Shiho informed as the applauses faded.

She was right, only a few seconds later Lacus entered the stage and the applauses and cheers started up again. Cheerful and calm as usual, she showed no signs of being nervous. Even though she was alone up on the stage and with the spotlight shining down on her, she seemed so relaxed that it was as if she belonged right there.

"I'd like to thank everyone again for coming," Lacus spoke into the microphone. "Spring is a very busy time for everyone. Still, it is a time of new beginnings and of happiness. This song is dedicated to that and to celebrating the arrival of spring."

Two boys, each carrying a guitar, came out on the stage and started to play a soft but upbeat tune. The audience cheered again but went quiet again as Lacus began singing. Looking around, Yzak could see how captivated the audience was by her voice. There was no one who wasn't paying full attention to the song. Lacus was good, there was no denying that.

But then he saw it.

A boy smiling shyly and, in Yzak's opinion, unmanly at the girl sitting next to him. He lifted his hand and slowly put it over the girl's. Rather than panicking, screaming, running or anything else a rational person would do, the girl just giggled and squeezed his hand back.

That was not the end of it. Suddenly they were everywhere. Couples holding hand, leaning their heads against shoulders, whispering, putting arms around each other and the list kept going on and on. Yzak felt goosebumps when he looked at the bench closest to him and saw the school librarian kiss her wrinkled old husband on the lips.

This song was acting like a catalyst for people to spontaneously become affectionate with each other. Yzak looked at Shiho. She was looking at Lacus singing, completely oblivious to what was going on around her. He felt great relief in seeing that she had enough common sense to not try to take his hand or something. Still, it was best to get away from here as soon as possible in case she'd get any ideas.

"Let's go," Yzak ordered brisquely.

He took Shiho's hand and dragged her with him as he struggled to get through the crowd.

"Y-Yzak!" Shiho protested but he pretended not to hear her.

There was nothing she could do to make him stay there. With all those couples in the audience it was just too risky. There was always the chance that she would notice or get caught up in the mood and he didn't want that to happen.

Obviously eager to get away from the concert area, Yzak didn't care where they were going as long as they were going somewhere. Away from the concert area, past the outdoor café, past the art exhibit, past the soccer field where the soccer team was playing against the parents' team. He kept walking and dragging Shiho with him, telling himself that he'd think of a good reason for leaving the concert later when he had the chance.

That chance came only a few minutes later, when he found himself standing before a dead end behind the gym. He almost smiled to himself in having succeeded in leading him and Shiho away from the concert area, they were so far away that they could hardly Lacus' song. No love song, no lyrics or lovesick audience that could influence Shiho in any way. The area behind the gym was perfect, it was quiet there, secluded and no one else was there…

_Oh shit._

Secluded.

No one else there.

Yzak swallowed. This was so not what he had in mind.

"Um... why are we here?" Shiho asked hesitantly.

Noticing that he was still holding her hand, Yzak dropped it quickly.

"W-we are here to…" Yzak stuttered, looking around at everything except Shiho.

She looked at him curiously and he felt heat rushing to his face, which only stressed him more. Yzak Jule didn't get embarrased, but if by some chance he would, this was the worst possible occasion for it.

He had to think of something!

"I-I need to evalute," he blurted out suddenly. "The, the festival. We need to evalute the festival."

"Are you alright?" Shiho asked, leaning just a little forward to take a closer look at his face. "You look a little flustered…"

"I'm fine!" Yzak shrieked, almost stumbling backwards in his attempt to put more safe distance between him and Shiho. "Let's just… do this."

It was best to keep their relationship on a professional level. Bringing in committee work would help keeping things as they were. Although Shiho was still looking at him strangely, she seemed to accept his excuse. She took out a small notepad and a pen from the pocket of her jacket and looked at Yzak as if she was waiting for him to say something. Not wanting to be force to look back at her, Yzak started pacing back and forth to avoid it.

"The placement of the exhibits could have been rearranged," Yzak started. "The science exhibit took too much space on the courtyard."

Nodding, Shiho wrote it down on her notepad.

"And some of the fences could have used repairing," he went on. "The last thing we want next year is some kid getting caught in them while trying to sneak in through a hole."

"Fences, got it."

"And the engineering club didn't get more fans like I told them, so they're not getting away with that."

"Punishing the weak, got it."

Yzak stopped and glared at Shiho.

"They were breaking regulations," he pointed out.

"Don't you think you were being a little too hard on them?" Shiho asked in return. "They did fix all the other stuff you asked them to do and you have to give them credit for trying to make their robots look prettier because you thought they were ugly."

"Those robots were an attack on my senses!" Yzak retorted. "Just… write it down. We'll finish the evaluation and after that we'll be done for today."

He crossed his arms, feeling defensive all of the sudden. Shiho looked like she wanted to say something, but instead kept quiet and waited for Yzak to go on. Not surprisingly he had no problem going on, having found minor faults here and there within each exhibit and activity. It didn't matter that the day had progressed without any accidents or problems, there was always something that could be improved on next year.

Shiho wrote down every detail of what he said and it was only after filling three full pages of notes that Yzak decided that it would do.

"That's it," he declared. "We're done now."

Smiling, Shiho put her notepad and pen back in her pocket.

"I think we might still make it to the end of the concert," she said, looking at her watch. "You want to head back?"

Yzak froze. Go back? To an audience that forgot that Valentine's Day had already passed three months ago?

"No thanks," he replied quickly. "I-I'll just stay here."

Shiho looked around as if trying to figure out if she had missed something. It wasn't like there was much to do behind the gym. Yzak bit his bottom lip and clenched his fist as he desperately tried to think of something that would sound convincing.

"I… um… I'm gonna…"

"Hey, it's okay."

Yzak stared at Shiho, who for some reason still had a smile on her lips. He was puzzled as to why and what she meant by saying that it was okay. What was okay? Was she starting to understand what was going on and saying that it was okay that he didn't want that kind of relationship with her? That would be great, beyond great actually. She understood, now there was no more need for him to feel as if he was walking on eggshells whenever she was nearby. Things could go back to normal, he could go back to being and acting normal. This was great…

"You don't like crowds much, do you?"

…too great to be true.

"What?!" Yzak exclaimed in disbelief.

"It's okay, it's nothing to get upset about," Shiho said gently. "Some people just don't like people much and prefer being alone…"

"I don't like being alone! And I like people!"

His last sentence seemed to amuse her and it was as if she was trying her best not to laugh. Had he been in a logical state of mind Yzak might have found it funny too but this was not a good time to be amused.

"If you say so," Shiho replied, sticking her hands into her pockets. "But it's okay either way. You don't have to feel like you need to pretend around me. You're just fine the way you are."

Sometime later she would say goodbye, turn around and walk away from him.

Sometime later he'd still be standing there pondering on what was going on in her head.

The music would go on in the background and he would stand there alone in a daze until the music died and it was only him and the silence left.

But between now and sometime later, there was a moment where he let his eyes meet hers and it occurred to him that she too was good the way she was.

---

The clock was ticking. 3:35 p.m. He was late, as could be expected.

Yzak drummed his fingers against the table, glancing up at the clock every now and then. Only a few seconds passed between each time, making him even more annoyed. Trust a student who had been repeated reported for tardiness to be late to receive his punishment from the disciplinary committee.

Another look towards the open door and out at the empty corridor told him that the student wasn't going to come within the next few minutes. So he walked away from the table and plopped down on the couch, putting his feet up at the nearest chair. His eyes fixed on a mysterious green spot on the ceiling.

It was Monday afternoon, which meant that in less than nine hours it would be Tuesday again. Not that Yzak knew of anything alarmingly bad that he had to do tomorrow but he was sure that something would come up just for the sake of happening on a Tuesday. But for now it was Monday and as long as it was Monday he could put his feet up and relax… while waiting for disaster, of course.

There was a knock on the door.

"Hey."

Yzak turned his head slightly to see Shiho standing outside by the door, as if waiting to be invited in. It puzzled him as to why she didn't just enter the room seeing as a member of the disciplinary committee she could go wherever in school she wanted. But he chose to let it pass and just acknowledged her with a nod. All the effort he had put into trying to keep her at a distance at the festival had mentally drained him more than he wanted to admit.

"School is over, I thought you'd be on your way home now," Shiho said casually and entered the room. "Is there something that needs to be done?"

"Not much," Yzak answered with a shrug. "Just a meeting with a student that the teachers reported."

"Okay… so what did he do?"

Turning his head a little more to get a proper look at her, Yzak noticed that she was still wearing the blazer of her school uniform. Most people took their blazers off after school hours, it was Spring after all and there was no need to be overdressed at Rousseau. He did notice, however, that she had unbuttoned a few buttons on her shirt. His eyes automatically followed the path of her neckline until…

He looked away, blushing.

"What?"

Shiho's tone revealed that she was clearly oblivious as to what Yzak was thinking of.

The next moment there was another knock on the door and both of them looked up to see a scrawny, freckled boy standing by the door.

"Uh… uhm… I-I'm, Brett Buchanon…" the boy stammered nervously. "I-I have a meeting with the discip…linary committee?

Either it was relief at not being left alone with Shiho anymore or it was simply instincts kicking in, but Yzak immediately jumped to his feet and assumed the scariest and most frightening look he had in storage.

"Brett Buchanon of class 1B?"

Yzak walked around the table, past Shiho and crossing the room to get to where Brett stood.

"Yeah…"

He stared down at the boy, a scared little first year who no doubt had heard all sorts of rumors about Yzak. Brett nearly cowered underneath Yzak's gaze and the latter felt a small sense of satisfaction up seeing how much he could effect someone.

Suddenly he kicked at the chair behind him, causing it to slide a meter and end up right in front the table. Both Shiho and Brett jumped upon the suddenly noise while Yzak remained completely unfazed.

"Sit," he ordered.

Not daring to disobey or wanting to remain under Yzak's eye, Brett took his chance and went to sit on the chair. Yzak barely resisted smiling to himself.

God, he was good.

"You have been reported thirteen times just the past month for being tardy," Yzak informed, walking behind Brett like a vulture. "The teachers don't like it… and I certainly don't."

He could see sweatdrops forming on Brett's forehead.

Smirking, he pulled out a form from the file cabinett and a pencil from his pocket.

"Three weeks of detention, that should do it… let's see how your parents will like you being tardy on your way home," Yzak muttered and started to fill the form out.

"Ahem."

Looking to his side, he saw Shiho looking at him. Seeing as she was neither sick or had choked on something, Yzak assumed that there was something that she wanted to say. He stopped writing and rolled his eyes.

"What?"

"Nothing, I just thought that it might be interesting to hear if Brett has something to say," Shiho said and turned to Brett with a smile that made her look like Mother Theresa in comparison to Yzak. "Brett, is there something you'd like to tell us?"

The boy knew well enough to shake his head when Yzak sent him a death glare.

Shiho noticed it and glanced at Yzak quickly before pulling out another chair and sitting down. Not just anywhere, but right next to Brett! Yzak nearly forgot about looking angry and scary when he saw it. What the hell was she doing?!

"How about telling us why you are late so often?" Shiho asked gently. "Do you oversleep? Forget to set the alarm clock…?"

Yzak took a deep breath instead of what he really wanted to do, which was to bang his head against something. What was she doing acting like she cared? Who the hell cared about why the idiot was late anyway? Handing out punishment and scaring the hell out of students was the disciplinary committee's job, not sit around and play twenty questions.

"Brett?"

Brett still didn't answer Shiho and he was looking down at the surface of the table.

Just when Yzak was about to laugh out loud at her lack of progress, the unthinkable happened.

Shiho reached out her hand.

And put it over Brett's.

It was as if someone had painted the world red all of the sudden. Yzak felt heat rising in his body, his fists shaking and clenching, his teeth biting into his bottom lip. Every fiber of his being wanted to set the world on fire and scream. His eyes were fixed on Shiho and Brett's hands, her hand placed over his.

WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON?!

WHAT WAS SHE DOING?!

"It's okay, you can tell us," Shiho urged.

Brett sighed quietly. Since neither he nor Shiho were paying any attention to Yzak they did not notice how he was like a vulcano about to erupt any moment.

Standing there, forgotten by the two of them, Yzak could hear his own heart beating like the sounds of a drum. He was barely holding it together as he watched them, wanting nothing more than to step forth and tear their hands apart. What was she doing anyway? Was she trying to make him jealous or something?

"It's my dog…" Brett told, looking straight into Shiho's eyes. "He's been very sick lately."

Yzak groaned.

Of all the reasons one could have for being late… this was Brett's. A dog.

"He hasn't been eating much and… sometimes I stay up late at night to watch over him… and…" Brett went on.

"So that's why you've been late to school so often," Shiho concluded. "Is it serious?"

"I don't know… the vet says that we should wait and see if he gets better," Brett replied, looking more and more pathetic by the moment. "But if he doesn't… I can't bear to lose him! He's been there for me since I was a kid… he's saved me from bullies so many times! And now I…"

"…feel like you need to save him," Shiho finished.

"Will someone please save me from this?" Yzak muttered to himself and rolled his eyes.

Shiho gave him a look, some kind of look, before turning her attention to Brett again. She reached for the form and the pencil that Yzak had started to fill out earlier.

"I tell you what…" she started and scratched something that Yzak had written. "Let's make it one week of detention instead of three. I know your dog means a lot to you, but we can't let you off just like that. Try to get here in time from now on, okay? Your dog wouldn't be happy knowing that you aren't getting enough sleep and getting in trouble at school."

With one final smile, Shiho signed her name at the bottom of the form, giving it the official approval of the disciplinary committee. Brett looked like he wanted to give her a big hug, but under Yzak's watchful eyes he didn't dare to do anything beyond smiling and thanking Shiho for having mercy on him. While Yzak resisted the urge to throw up, Brett left the room looking like he was on cloud nine.

"What the hell was that?" Yzak snapped the moment Brett was gone.

Putting the form into a folder, Shiho looked up at Yzak.

"Excuse me?"

Yzak rolled his eyes again. Was she going to act like she had no idea what he was talking about?

"What's with you getting all intimate with that guy?" he questioned.

"Intimate?" Shiho repeated, still as clueless as before. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Either she was really into playing this game or she had no idea what he was talking about. Yzak crossed his arms as their eyes met. He couldn't believe that she had to make him say it out loud.

"Don't act like you don't know… you held his hand."

Upon him saying those words, everything fell completely silent. Shiho stopped whatever sorting she was doing with the form and the folder and just stared back at Yzak. He tried to read the expression in eyes, on her face, to determine what her reaction was. The strange thing was… her reaction was nothing. She stared at him with the most blank and neutral face that Yzak had ever seen. At the moment the only thing more neutral than her would be a white canvas.

"You're not joking, are you?" Shiho asked after a while.

Yzak felt his heart pounding faster again. What was wrong with her?! Couldn't she see what he was seeing?

"C'mon, you held the guy's hand and he pulled some sob story about his dog? Get real! The dog probably doesn't even exist, he probably just used you to get away with the whole thing!"

"What if it does exist?" Shiho retorted.

"Who cares if it does? The guy broke the rules, he should get a punishment according to that! We're the disciplinary committee, we don't listen to puppy dog stories and hold hands with people who screw up!"

Frowning, Shiho turned away from Yzak and started to gather her things.

"I don't know what's wrong with you today," she muttered as she picked up her book bag. "But I'm not going to stand here and have you yelling at me. I'm going to give this form to Mrs Napier and I will see you tomorrow."

She immediately left the room, almost knocking a chair over in the process. Once her presence was reduced to fading foot steps in the hallway, Yzak fell back into the couch again. He found himself in the exact same position as he had been fifteen minutes ago, although in a much worse mood and a nagging feeling that just wouldn't stop.

Letting out a frustrated groan, he couldn't figure out why this whole thing had bothered him so much.

---

The house was quiet and dinner was in the oven as usual.

Ella, the housekeeper, made the best vegetarian lasagna in the world. But this was just her job and at the end of the day she would go home and be with her family. It was a luxury that Yzak didn't have, despite how rich his mother was.

The answering machine was blinking when he came home, his mother had called.

_"Hey Yzak, it's me... I know you're in school right now but this is the only time when I can get away and make a phone call. I hope Ella is taking good care of you while I'm gone, I feel a little bad for going on this business trip… especially since I won't be back until next Sunday. Yes, I know, you're not a baby anymore and you can take care of yourself… but I guess I just really miss you. Anyway, I have to go now, the others are waiting for me. Remind Ella to bring my blue suit to the dry cleaners before I come back, I'll need it right away. I'll call you tomorrow, hopefully I'll get a chance to actually talk to you then. Bye… I love you!"_

He almost smiled upon hearing his mother's voice and rather than deleting the message he just let it be.

The table had already been set, all Yzak had to do was take the lasagna out of the oven and serve it. He ate in silence as he had done many times, the only thing keeping him company was this morning's newspaper. Still, he was used to it. His mother's work kept her very busy and often away from home. Conferences, business trips, early and late hours… she always said that she wished she was at home more often but deep down both she and Yzak knew that she wasn't the kind of mother who did laundry and baked cookies.

After dinner he did the usual things. Turned on his computer, checked his emails, did a little research for an essay he had to write next week. But when it came down to it, by 7:37 p.m. he had nothing to do.

Instinctively he put on his shoes and jacket, intending to head over to Dearka's house as he always did when he was bored. But when he was just a few steps out the door it occurred to him that Dearka was probably not home. None of the staff of the school newspaper were, they were all busy putting together the special edition about the festival.

Sighing, he ran his hand through his hair. What was he supposed to do now? Go back inside and watch TV? Seeing as it was what he had done the past few days, he wasn't exactly happy to spend yet another night doing the same thing. Finding no other alternative that was better, Yzak started walking.

He walked to the end of the lane and arrived at a park surrounded by a high fences. In his whole life Yzak had never questioned why anyone would build a public park with fences, seeing as it was supposed to be… well, public. But he was sure it had something to do with keeping things in order, being in the disciplinary committee Yzak understood that sometimes there were stupid rules in order to prevent stupid people to do stupid things. He opened the small gate and went through it, putting his hands in his pockets as he walked across the park.

Not too far away was a small duck pond. This was where he used to play when he was little with his toy boats, pretending that he was captain of the greatest ship in the fleet and occasionally running away from the aggressive ducks. Dearka sometimes humored him by playing his second in command and ever since then Yzak had developed a liking for being the one ranking the highest. That, and the fact that he couldn't stand how all the kids ran over to Athrun Zala when he arrived at the park with his super, ultra spaceship toy that could hover three inches off the ground.

Yzak frowned deeply. That guy had beaten Yzak in practically everything ever since they were enrolled at the same daycare. Healthy competition, people called it. It was all in Yzak's imagination, others said, since Athrun never showed any signs of caring about who won or not. Yzak called it deceiving the public. He knew Athrun Zala's true nature, he knew that Athrun just a few weeks ago had signed and approved Shiho's application form just to spite him. Which in turn had lead to everything that had happened recently. There was only one conclusion that could be drawn.

Bending down, Yzak picked up a small stone and hurled it into the duck pond with as much force as he could muster.

Everything really was Athrun Zala's fault.

It was his fault that Shiho was with the disciplinary committee, that she had developed a crush on Yzak and if she hadn't been in the committee, Yzak wouldn't ever have had to witnessed the… scene between her and Brett Buchanon earlier that afternoon. Why did this have to happen to him? Was the entire world out to make his head explode in anger?

But then again… why did this matter to him?

Feeling his anger disappearing quickly as if being washed away, he stared at the duck pond but his eyes weren't really looking at anything at all. The question he had just asked himself echoed inside his mind. Why did it matter that Shiho held Brett's hand? If anything it should have been good, if she was giving another boy her attention it would been that he would be off the hook. But for all the thinking he did he still couldn't find a proper, good answer to why it did matter to him.

He had no idea how long he stood there just staring at nothing and thinking about nothing in particular either. But sometime later he decided that it was better to go home than to stand around the duck pond like a mindless idiot.

But when he got back to the section of the park where the gate was he saw that he was no longer along. At first he saw the silhouettes of two people, a boy and a girl, standing by the swings. Upon stepping a little closer he instantly recognized the two of them. The boy was Kira Yamato from the engineering club. The girl was Fllay Alster from class 2D. It was no secret that the two of them were dating, since Fllay's friends were the kind of people that liked talking a little too much.

Yzak took another step forward, intending on getting home as soon as possible. But he did not get much further, his eyes caught sight of the gate he had gone through earlier. It was closed now and Kira was leaning right against it. The pair had clearly not noticed Yzak's presence and went on as usual.

"That movie was sooo boring," Fllay sighed and sat down on the swing. "It was pretty well made and the music was good, but the plot… I can't believe we paid to watch it."

Though Yzak was too far away to read their facial expressions, he could tell by Kira's silence that the latter did not quite agree. Perhaps Fllay noticed it as well, because next time she spoke she changed subjects.

"What are you doing next Saturday?" she asked. "You and your family planning anything?"

"Um… not sure, I don't know," Kira mumbled.

"Charmaine and the others are going to this techno club," Fllay told, pushing at the ground with her feet and swinging back and forth. "It's right in the middle of Sextilis 1. I told them that their parents will never let them go for it but they said they'd work out some sort of plan. Let's go with them if they figure something out? The club sounds fun and it's been a while since we all went out…"

"Fllay…"

Distance did not seem to matter. Even from Yzak's position at twenty meters away that sounded omnious.

"It's not just going to be you and us girls," Fllay clarified and smiled. "Shoshana's boyfriend is coming along too and…"

"…we need to talk."

The swing came to a sudden halt as Fllay planted her feet back on the ground.

Feeling a strange sense of panic, Yzak looked around frantically for some kind of solution. Wasn't there any other way he could get through the fences and go home? Aside from the fact that he wanted nothing to do with their conversation, eavesdropping was an undignified habit that he did not intend to pick up. But no matter how much he looked around he could not find another way. The gate was the only way for him to get home unless he wanted to attempt climbing up three meter high fences and risk breaking his neck. There was also the option of going around the park and the fence which meant that he'd be home in forty minutes as opposed to the five minutes it took to go through the gate.

Who the hell was stupid enough to only place on gate at a park of this size?!

Finding that there was no other option but to wait until they left or at least until their talk was over, Yzak settled for hiding behind a tree and wishing he was deaf.

"What is it?" Fllay asked.

Kira was looking down, clearly not wanting to face her.

"I'm sorry…" he began. "I-I don't think we're right for each other."

Everything was completely silent for a while. Fllay said nothing and just stared at Kira from where she sat. Seconds passed without anything happening, Yzak almost found himself holding his breath waiting for her reaction.

What was she going to do? Was she going to cry? Punch him, kick him, throw something at him?

"What do you mean?" Fllay questioned.

There was anger in her voice, but also a slight tremble. She was upset.

Kira didn't exactly look that good either. He kept staring down and trying to avoid looking at Fllay. His hands dug into his pockets. It was as if it was too difficult for him to go through with whatever he wanted if he had to face her while doing it.

"Fllay… you and I… we're too different," he explained. "I've tried… but…"

His voice faded and Yzak got the distinct impression that Kira didn't really how to explain it.

Fllay got up from the swing.

"Kira…" Her voice was softer now. "I know you don't like my friends much and they're not like people you're used to hanging around… and I know I'm a little demanding sometimes, but… we've been together for a year! We're in love with each other!"

She stepped closer to Kira, staring right at him and waiting for him to raise his eyes and look at her. It was one final, desperate plea.

"…right?"

But he didn't.

"…I'm sorry," Kira apologized. "It's just not working. It's not you, it's…"

"It's me," Fllay finished for him. "Yes, it is you."

Her voice was trembling even more than before. Shaking her head, Fllay backed away from Kira. Yzak could see how this was affecting her, her arms were crossed defensively like she wanted to shield herself. Kira opened his mouth to say something but at the same moment Fllay turned her back on him.

"Don't say anything," she whispered. "Just… don't."

Without looking back, she set off and ran away as fast as she could. As she passed by the trees Yzak was hiding behind, he could see tears rolling down her cheeks. There was a look of suffering in her face that froze in Yzak's mind and he wondered how anyone could be so attached to another person as much as Fllay was with Kira.

It was too late by the time Kira dared to look at Fllay, she was already gone by then.

Sighing deeply, he sank down and sat on the very same swing that Fllay had occupied just a few minutes ago. He kicked at the ground occasionally, staring at nothing. From what Yzak could tell he looked neither happy nor sad. Just blank.

Standing there and waiting for Kira to leave could take hours, the latter seemed to have no intention of leaving the playground anytime soon. Deciding that it was better to walk around the park, Yzak turned around to leave. Unfortunately he did the typical thing one should avoid when hiding from others. He stepped on a twig that made the world's loudest crack as it burst into two.

Yzak looked over his shoulder to see Kira staring straight at him.

How wonderful. Now he was going to be accused to spying when all he really wanted was to get back home.

"Have you been standing there long?" Kira asked.

Lying would have been the best thing to do.

"Yeah."

But Yzak Jule wasn't afraid of telling the truth.

Rather than getting angry and shouting inappropriate words at him, Kira just nodded.

"So you heard everything?"

"Yeah."

Yzak didn't know why but for some reason he felt that it was safe enough to walk over to Kira and sit down on the swing next to him. Just after doing that he realized that he had no idea why. It wasn't like he and Kira knew each other outside of school and in school they only met whenever Yzak had issues with the engineering club.

Still, there was something that made him want to stay for a little while.

"Fllay and I… we've been together since our first year at Rousseau," Kira told. "Before that she liked my friend Ssigh and I was too scared to talk to her. It felt unreal almost when we got together, like it was too good to be true."

Kira's openess to talking to an almost stranger surprised Yzak a little, but he let it pass. He was curious about this whole thing for some reason. After witnessing what had just happened with Kira and Fllay, what Kira told him now didn't seem to make any sense.

"If you liked her so much, why did you dump her?" Yzak asked bluntly.

Despite Yzak's choice of words, Kira didn't seem to mind the question.

"She changed, I changed. We both changed. I cared about her, but after a while I started to wonder what it was that made me care about her in the first place. I couldn't find a reason and without that… I didn't feel the same as before."

Kira shook his head lightly.

"I guess that's the thing with high school relationships," he said, with just a hint of bitterness in his voice. "They never last long. People kept telling me and I wouldn't believe it at first."

Not quite knowing what to say, Yzak just nodded. Kira turned to him.

"Are you seeing someone?" he wondered.

Shiho came to mind, for some reason.

"No," Yzak answered.

"I guess it's not easy to find someone can accepts you and doesn't want to change you, at least at our age."

They sat there in silence for what could have been a minute or an hour, both lost in their own thoughts and memories. By the time Kira pushed up his jacket sleeve and looked at his watch, Yzak had no idea how much time had passed since he had left his house.

"It's pretty late… I better get home," Kira said and got up from the swing. "I guess I'll see you in school tomorrow."

"Yeah… see ya," Yzak murmured absentmindedly.

As Kira walked away Yzak could not help thinking that Kira was way off in what he had said. Yzak hadn't looked very hard, but he did not have to look around that much to find Shiho.

---

It was raining on Tuesday. How typical.

The rain started in the morning as a light drizzle that everyone assumed would be over in an hour or so. But as hours passed, spent indoors in classrooms and hallways, the rain fell heavier and heavier until all Yzak could do during maths was to sit there and listen to the raindrops falling against the roof.

Chewing on the other end of his pencil, Yzak looked out the window. He was sitting on the other side of the classroom and all he could see was the water drops running down the glass. It was a pity that his seat wasn't closer to the window. Turning his head and looking over his shoulder, his eyes drifted towards Shiho. Her seat was right by the window and as one might have guessed she too was occupied with staring out the window rather than working with the math assignment.

His mind flashed back to her first week at Rousseau. It wasn't that long ago that he had watched her the same way he did now and observing how often she seemed to look out the window. The same question he had asked himself back then still applied now at this very moment. Who was she? What or who was she thinking about? Him or Brett?

Suddenly Shiho's head turned slightly. She looked up and their eyes met.

So what if she liked him?

So what if she wasn't scared of him like everyone else?

So what if she accepted him for what he was?

It didn't mean anything, anything at all. It didn't matter.

This whole thing was plain stupid. Her crush on him was stupid, him trying to avoid the issue was stupid, whatever reason that made him blow up over her and Brett Buchanon was stupid, he was being…

Yzak broke off their eye contact and started scribbling furiously in his maths book.

They never had a chance to speak the rest of the day. The teachers overwhelmed everyone with new assignments and tasks in preparation for the upcoming exams and to make up for the past week of festival preparations. After class there was never a chance to speak as well, Yzak rushed off quickly. It was not so much that he did not want to speak to her, it was just that he had no idea what to say. It was not just her either, he hardly knew what to say to anyone.

"Oi, what's with you today?" Dearka asked at lunch.

Normally he would have some sort of answer, a comeback or just snap at someone for the sake of it. Perhaps it was the rain, perhaps it was what he had witnessed at the park yesterday… or perhaps it was merely nothing at all because all he could answer Dearka with was a shrug.

It was still raining by the time the history class was over, signalling the end of the school day. It was a good thing that he decided to stop by the student council's offices to drop off a few things before he went home. There was no one there and yet someone had left behind an umbrella. Seeing as it probably belonged to Athrun Zala, Yzak had no qualms about taking it for his own use.

He should have known better.

It was by the school's main entrance that he found Shiho standing all by herself. She was barely protected from the rain where she stood and as far as Yzak could see she had no umbrella with her. The one Yzak had taken from the student council's office weighed heavy in his hand and with a sigh he started to walk across the courtyard and over to her.

"Waiting for someone?" he asked as he approached her, holding the umbrella so that it covered her as well.

Shiho smiled slightly, not too much, upon seeing him.

"No, just waiting for the rain to lighten," she answered. "I have to get home."

"I'll walk you home," Yzak offered.

Shiho shook her head.

"No, it's okay… I don't want you to have to take a detour in this weather just because of me," she declined politely. "Besides, it will probably get better soon. It can't rain like this all day."

"Oh."

The rain showed no signs of ceasing, despite Shiho's hopes. Neither of them said anything but Yzak stayed by her side even though she had already declined his offer. He didn't know why, he could technically just leave and be on his way home. Standing outside in the rain wasn't exactly one of his favorites activities, he prefer to be indoors when it was raining.

But they were standing so close, underneath the cover of the umbrella. It was not so much that he couldn't leave her alone like this, it was that he did not want to.

It was nothing. It should have been nothing.

"I like you."

The words were said so suddenly that he thought that someone else had spoken at first. But that was his own voice saying those words, his own thoughts and feelings behind those words. It came from somewhere within him, a place that he had been trying to ignore the past few days. His hand clutched the umbrella harder and he looked at Shiho.

She had to say something, anything.

But all she did was stare back at him, eyes a little wider than usual as if she was caught off guard or surprised. Yzak felt a lump rising in his throat. She couldn't be surprised, she had to see this coming, this was what she wanted too…

"I…" Shiho started, then stopped.

"For God's sake say something," Yzak whispered sharply.

He hid his free hand behind his back. Why was it shaking?

"I…" Shiho started again.

Still not saying anything, she turned her eyes away from him. Yzak's heart beat faster. What was the matter? Why couldn't she look at him?

"That day when you ran off," Yzak told, not sure why he felt the need to explain himself. "By the tree, we were talking and you said you…"

"You must have misunderstood."

She closed her eyes, as if not wanting to look at anything at all.

"What do you mean?" Yzak questioned, clenching his hand into a fist to make it stop shaking. "You said you…"

"I'm sorry," Shiho apologized. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm so sorry."

Opening her eyes, she turned to face Yzak again. He nearly backed off just by seeing the look in her eyes. There was nothing there but pity, compassion for someone who had been deeply mistaken. For someone like him.

At once the past few days replayed in his mind. All the times he had thought she wanted something, all the times he thought he had seen something in those eyes… it was only because he had wanted to see something. She wasn't the one who had felt something, it was him all along. How could he have been so foolish? How could he have misunderstood one single sentence so wrong? How could he have been so blinded by his own emotions?

He stopped hearing the rain fall, stopped hearing the cars driving by and the wind blowing at the trees. Every sound was blocked out save for the sound of his own breathing and heartbeat. All he could see was her and her eyes, a constant reminder of how mistaken he was.

Taking Shiho's hand, Yzak closed it around the umbrella.

"Yzak…" Shiho whispered.

But she didn't say anything else. After all, there was nothing to say.

Leaving the umbrella with Shiho, Yzak walked right past her and ran into the rain.

---

**_Next: Chapter 4 - Her decision_**


	4. Her chance

**His and her reasons  
Chapter 4: Her ****chance**

Notes: Eek, I've really neglected updating this! But inspiration struck the other day and suddenly I could not stop writing and pulled an all nighter with the intention of finishing this chapter. So here's the result of it. The title has changed and it is shorter than the previous chapters, but I'd like to think that it's because chapters 1-3 were humongous. Thanks for reading, I hope you'll like it.

---

A car drove by.

The alarm clock rung.

Her eyes were already wide open.

Reaching over to the nightstand, she turned off the alarm clock and slowly slipped out of bed. It had been six hours since she had managed to fall asleep, two hours since she had woken up and been unable to go back to sleep. Fourteen hours since she had gotten home from school, sixteen hours since Yzak Jule had left her standing with his umbrella and run away from her.

One hour and fifteen minutes until her classes started and she had to see him again.

She did everything as usual that morning. She took a shower, got dressed, brushed her hair, and packed her books, always in that order. Even walking down the stairs to the kitchen had become a well rehearsed routine, always her right foot on the first step, left foot on the second.

Anja, Cooper and Rafe were already right in the middle of their routine. Rafe was making as fuss as usual, refusing to have cereal for breakfast and Cooper was trying to convince him with very little luck. Anja was mentally already at work, speaking to one of her colleagues on her cell phone while looking through a thick folder. None of that changed when Shiho arrived and sat down by the table, though Rafe gave her a toothy grin while pushing his cereal bowl towards her.

"You'll have to finish that cereal on your own today," Shiho said in response, smiling a little and pushing the bowl back towards the boy.

"Dun' wanna!"

Rafe stuck out his tongue, and then proceeded to crawl and hide under the table. Meanwhile Cooper just sighed and, deciding to give up for the time being, sat slumped in his chair with a steaming cup of herbal tea.

Shiho looked over the table. There were all the usual things that they had for breakfast. Toast, croissants fresh from the oven, fruit, cereal, juice, tea, coffee, milk. A part of her usual routine would be to pour a glass of orange juice, have two slices of buttered toast and an apple. That had been a part of her morning routine even when she lived with her parents and it was something that had been continued while living with Cooper and Anja.

But this morning she did not reach for the orange juice. In fact she did not reach for something at all.

"Stop being such a drama queen, Richard, of course there's something we can do about this," Anja spoke into the phone, rolling her eyes. "I don't care if he's telling the truth, truth really just a synonym for circumstantial evidence anyway. Yes, I'll talk to you later when I get there."

Turning off the phone, Anja looked like she wanted to break it into two rather than putting it down carefully on the table like she did. The day had hardly started and she already looked the same way she did after ten hours at work. From her side of the table Shiho noticed how Cooper slowly came crawling towards Anja under the table. Her first instinct was to warn the child to leave his less than happy mother alone. But Cooper just climbed up in Anja's lap and surprisingly Anja let him stay here.

"Wanna try something good, Rafe?" Anja asked, smiling more warmly than Shiho thought she was capable of. She waved her half eaten croissant in front of Cooper who waved his arms trying to reach for it.

Cooper looked at them with a mild look of concern.

"Honey, the cereal is much better for him than a croissant..." he started. "It has all the important nutrients..."

"Coop, would you rather our son not eat anything at all for breakfast?" Anja cut off, looking into her husband's eyes.

At that moment Rafe managed to snatch the croissant and, realizing that there was no sense in arguing, Cooper just shrugged.

Anja went back to looking through her folder with Rafe sitting comfortably in her lap and ate. Cooper occasionally sipped his tea but mostly stared out the window. It was almost like he seemed lost without having his son to chase around. A few minutes passed like this. After a while Shiho got up from her seat.

Anja looked up and saw the empty plate.

"Aren't you going to eat something?" she asked.

Shiho shook her head.

"No, I'm not that hungry today. I think I'll just... go to school early."

"I'll drive you, I'm about to head to work in ten minutes anyway," Anja offered.

"No, it's okay," Shiho declined, smiling a little just to make everything seem normal. "I feel like walking today, it's nice outside."

The truth was that she had hardly looked out the window that morning, much less noticed what the weather was like. But Anja seemed to accept her explanation with a small nod.

"See you guys tonight then."

With that Shiho turned around and left the kitchen. She picked up her book bag that she had left by the stairs and proceeded to the hallway. Slipping into her shoes, she was just about to head out the door when she caught something standing by the coat rack.

An umbrella.

The umbrella.

His umbrella.

_That day when you ran off. By the tree, we were talking and you said you…_

_You must have misunderstood._

Frowning, Shiho grabbed the umbrella and then left the house.

---

It was like yesterday's rain was a bad dream that had gone away and there was something cheerful and calm about the day. The sky had cleared up and the sun was shining as if it was summer already. All the remained of yesterday's bad weather were small puddles of water on the ground and Shiho avoided those as much as she could.

She ended up standing in front of the school gates for quite a while, just staring at the building on the other side in silence. Seeing as she was early, not that many students had arrived yet but those that did mostly gave her a strange look and then moved on. Shiho herself was not sure why she was standing there. But she did feel strange upon thinking that she should walk through the gates and enter the school building. The memories of standing on the other side yesterday and watching the rain came back to her, including the memory of what had happened afterwards.

_But I have to go inside sooner or later..._

Clutching the umbrella tightly in her hand, she tried to decide on a quick strategy for the next few hours.

She would go to the Disciplinary Committees room and wait for Yzak there. Once he arrived, she would return his umbrella. And then...

Shiho bit her bottom lip.

_And then..._

A few more minutes passed with her standing outside the school gate. Once it occurred to Shiho that time was simply passing without her coming to a conclusion, she took a deep breath and walked through the gate anyway.

_And then I'll decide what to do_, she thought, hoping that she'd at least know when the right time came.

The committee room as empty as usual when she arrived. It was not strange, considering that the two others were not exactly the type to get to school early. Yzak was extremely punctual, always arriving on time but never a minute early or late. Dearka, on the other hand, had a habit of always being five minutes late in the morning.

Setting her bag aside, Shiho sat down on one of the chairs and waited.

As the minutes passed the corridor outside the committee room slowly went from quiet to having a constant buzz. People passed each other, said their good morning, ran off to do some sort of errand before the first class started.

Sitting in the empty room, Shiho almost felt as if she was in another world than the students outside. She heard them speaking, was aware of the noises outside but in the whole she could not hear one conversation, follow one voice or one person. They said greetings each time they passed someone they knew, but everyone was in such a hurry that no one stopped. They kept walking, rushing past each other and finding no reason strong enough to stop. Everyone out there was just simply a crowd and intangible.

There wasn't one single person out there that she could follow or relate to.

No one who would stop and see her.

A dark shade suddenly covered the room and Shiho looked up to see Yzak standing in the doorway, effectively blocking out some of the light.

With the light coming from behind him, his face was partially shaded and it was difficult for Shiho to see his expression.

Suddenly her mouth felt dry and she struggled to get the first word out.

"H-hey."

"Hey," Yzak answered briefly.

Before Shiho could even think about what to say next, Yzak made a straight beeline towards the file cabinet. He stood there with his back turned to Shiho, rummaging through some files and not saying another word.

Shiho had hoped that when the moment came she would know what to do.

Unfortunately things did not always work out as planned and as she sat there all she could think of was what to do, what to say.

But there was no time left for thinking. Whatever it was that Yzak was looking for, he found it and shut the file cabinet. Without saying goodbye or acknowledging Shiho in some way he left the room quickly.

Once again Shiho was sitting alone in the room. He had come in and left so fast that she thought that it was completely possible that she had just imagined it all.

---

Her next chance came four hours later.

Yzak had disappeared right after the end of the each class and she had no idea where he went. She knew he did not go back to the committee room, because she went there every break to see if he was there. But now as she was standing at the end of the line at the cafeteria, she caught sight of him sitting at the table with Dearka. Dearka was busy with some elaborate storytelling judging by the way he moved his arms around. From what she could see Yzak just sat there eating his lunch.

Reaching over the counter and handing the lunch lady payment for her food, Shiho glanced in Yzak's direction. Perhaps if he was bored by Dearka's story she could get a chance to talk to him.

Not that Shiho knew what to say yet.

Grabbing her tray, she took a deep breath and started to walk towards their table. Dearka noticed her coming and waved happily at her.

"Hey Shiho!"

Shiho smiled in return.

"Hey... can I sit with you guys?" she asked carefully and glanced at Yzak again.

But he said nothing and did not even look up at her, being too busy poking his fries around with a fork.

"Sure, grab a seat," Dearka answered casually.

Shiho set down her tray and sat down on the only available chair.

"I was just telling Yzak about this car show I went to," Dearka started. "You should have seen the..."

Whatever story Dearka was about to tell, it was suddenly interrupted by the sound of Yzak's fork falling against the porcelain plate. Dearka fell silent and both he and Shiho watched as Yzak pushed out his chair and stood up.

"I got some work to do before class," he muttered, picking up his tray.

He had just taken the first three steps when Shiho, feeling her heart beating faster in a strange way, suddenly stood up as well.

"I-I still have your umbrella," she blurted out, hoping that it would stop Yzak from leaving.

For the first time that day she felt what almost resembled joy when Yzak stopped and turned around. But the feeling disappeared quickly. The expression on Yzak's face was anything but joyous and Shiho almost felt cold by just looking at him.

"You can keep it, it wasn't my umbrella to begin with," he answered with a shrug.

That was it.

After that Yzak walked away from the table and disappeared among the cafeteria crowd. Shiho stood motionless for a while, and then sank back into her chair. She felt utterly defeated.

Having noticed the strange reactions, Dearka looked at Shiho for some sort of explanation. When it became clear that she was not going to say something, he excused himself and went off to find his friend.

Her stomach growled and for the first time Shiho became aware that she had not eaten anything all day yet. Turning back to the table and picking up her fork, she poked at the pasta salad with it. Though she managed to finish her food and felt physically full afterwards, there was a strange hollowness inside her that she could not explain.

---

Anja was working late that night as well, which meant that it was only Cooper, Rafe and Shiho present at dinner.

Rafe was being quite the troublemaker that night, refusing to sit still as Cooper tried to feed him and throwing things around whenever he had a temper tantrum. Seeing as those tantrums happened about once every two minutes, Cooper pretty much had his hands full. Shiho, on the other hand, was grateful that Cooper was too occupied with Rafe to try to make small talk to her. She had nothing against her cousin's husband, but having to make small talk to him and pretending to be happy after this day would be far too difficult.

She offered to wash up after dinner, allowing Cooper the time to give his son a bath and put him to bed. Doing the dishes was strangely soothing in a way, allowing her to do something practical and not having to think at the same time. That was why she took her time, allowing her fingers to get all wrinkled in the soapy water.

By the time the front door opened and Anja came home Shiho had just finished washing up. Cooper came down with Rafe in his arms and to say good night.

"Good night, sweetheart." Anja smiled and kissed Rafe on his forehead. "Sweet dreams."

"'Night mommy," the child murmured, the bath having made him sleepy.

"I left a plate for you in the fridge," Cooper whispered and then headed upstairs with his son.

Anja watched them go, and then headed down the hallway which connected with the kitchen at the end. She found Shiho standing there, putting the last of the clean plates away.

"Thanks for washing up," Anja said, realizing what Shiho had done. "If Cooper was here by himself he'd be so busy taking care of Rafe that this kitchen would look like a dumpster."

"It's okay, I'm happy to help," Shiho answered, forcing herself to put on the best smile she could. It was not much but at the moment it was all that she could muster.

Anja walked over to the refrigerator and took out the dinner plate that Cooper had left for her.

"How was school today?" she asked, glancing up at Shiho as she put the plate in the microwave.

"Good," Shiho replied automatically.

It had been anything but good, in fact Shiho was starting to regret the fact that she decided to enter the school that morning. Standing outside the gates and staring would have been a better option, at least that was what she realized now.

Anja nodded at her response, but kept looking at Shiho as if she was waiting for the latter to say something more. Feeling increasingly nervous, Shiho decided that it was best to go.

"I think I'm going to go to bed now..." She put her hands in her pocket, trying to look as normal as she could. "Good night."

She was almost out of the kitchen when Anja called her name.

"Shiho?"

Shiho closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again and turned around.

Anja stood there, looking at her with the same questioning gaze that Shiho imagined her giving a witness in a trial. But there was also something else in the way Anja relaxed her shoulders as she turned to her.

"You know that if anything happens, you can tell me, right?" Anja asked. "You live here now, if there's something wrong or if there's bothering you... I'm not going to say that I need to know because I'm the adult responsible for you. But you can tell me if you want to."

Had it been at another time, another moment, Shiho would have been able to give Anja a true and honest smile. But at the moment all she could do was curve her lips slightly and pretend to smile in order to show Anja that she appreciated this.

"...thanks."

"You're welcome," Anja replied. "Good night."

Although Shiho got the distinct feeling that Anja was not fooled by her smile, she was grateful that the latter did not force her to tell anything and just let her be.

She headed up the stairs, past the nursery where Cooper had just tucked Rafe in and finally reached the door to her room. She reached for the door knob desperately and opened the door. At least in her room she would be calm, nothing could touch her once she was inside.

Slipping through the door and closing it after herself quickly, Shiho took a deep breath.

Silence.

Nothing but silence.

Her feet practically moved on their own, taking her towards the bed where she finally collapsed. Lying on her back with her arms and legs spread out, she stared up at the ceiling.

_"I got some work to do before class."_

_"You can keep it, it wasn't my umbrella to begin with."_

Shiho shut her eyes, rolling over on her side and drawing her knees up to her chin.

She tried to remind herself that she was in the safety of her room. This was the room she had found so calm and soothing the first night she had spent there. Everything about it, the colors, the decorations... everything was so calm that she could automatically forget about the outside world and all its troubles. This was the room she was in now. This was where she was supposed to find calm and peace.

But despite what she tried to tell herself, she slept very badly that night. On a few occasions she managed to drift off to sleep, only to awaken one or two hours later. Each time she woke up there was the sense of a day gone horribly wrong.

Perhaps when it came down to it, it was all about chances that she had not taken.

---

The coffee from the vending machine was horrible.

Shiho did her best trying to drink it all for the sake of getting the caffeine in her system but in the end she persuaded herself that it was better to fall asleep in class than being forced to finish that cup. In fact, even a detention would be preferable.

There was only one class left anyway, how bad could it be?

Yzak was standing outside the classroom when she came around the corner. The moment he caught sight of her he disappeared into the classroom with Dearka following shortly afterwards. Judging by the confused look on him, it seemed like he still did not know what had happened. Shiho was not surprised by this. Yzak had avoided her all day, even when she found him in the committee room he managed to come up with some sort of excuse and leave.

Shiho hesitated before entering the classroom.

It was only one class left, and then she could go home and try to forget that both this day and yesterday.

But then there was the thought of going home and starting another day where the same thing would happen again.

It was that thought that made her unable to concentrate on the math problem she was supposed to solve. All she did during the entire lesson was staring at the numbers without any thought related to them at all. Occasionally she would look up at Yzak's direction and found something inside of her sinking when she discovered that he wasn't looking back at her.

The clock ticking and the sound of pencils scribbling furiously against sheets of paper was the only thing she heard for nearly fifty minutes.

After what felt like an eternity, the bell suddenly rang and everyone sprung up from their seats. Despite the teacher trying to get everyone to leave in an orderly fashion, all the students seemed to be in a rush to leave the classroom.

Shiho was the first one out the door.

Trying to put as much distance between the classroom and herself, she nearly ran all the way to her locker. Once she reached it she opened quickly, only to figure out that she had no idea why she had gone to her locker.

It had not been so much about getting to the locker quickly as it was about getting away from the classroom before she could watch Yzak walk away from her again.

Taking a deep breath, Shiho leaned her forehead against the locker door.

I can't go on like this...

She needed to do something. Something to distract her.

Standing up straight, she reached into her locker and grabbed the thickest book that was in there. Then she pulled out a folder containing all her notes for her physics class. She piled them up along with the books she had broke with her from maths.

Study. She was going to go home and study.

Forget about Yzak and everything that he was doing to her.

Slamming the locker door shut, Shiho turned around and nearly screamed upon seeing the person in question standing right before her. Startled, she instinctively backed up against the locker.

Yzak was standing within three feet of her, close yet holding his distance. His face was lowered, as if he did not want to look Shiho in the eyes.

Shiho felt her chest heaving up and down as she breathed, the shock not having quite worn off yet. What was he doing here, what did he want?

"Yzak...?"

"Dearka said you dropped this in the classroom," Yzak muttered.

He held up a black and white ruler in front of her face. Shiho only had to take one look at the ruler to know that it was not hers and did not even look anything like her ruler.

"That's not mine," she said automatically.

She regretted saying it the moment the words came out. When Yzak heard her he just shrugged, put the ruler in his pocket and turned around to leave. It was at that moment that Shiho realized what Dearka was trying to do and she mentally scolded herself for figuring it out too late.

"Wait!"

Adjusting the books that she carried in her arms, Shiho followed Yzak. He stopped when she called but when he turned to her it was the same cold expression that he had shown yesterday at lunch. Just seeing it made Shiho question whether this person was really the same one she had spent the past few weeks at school with.

"Why are you treating me like this?" she asked sincerely, looking into his eyes and hoping for some sort of emotion to come forth. "Why are you ignoring me?"

Yzak looked away and broke their eye contact.

"I just don't want to be around you, that's all."

The heavy, sinking feeling started to resurface inside Shiho again but she followed him when he tried to continue walking.

"Why?" she questioned, shifting all of her books over to one arm so that she had grab his shoulder with her hand.

He stopped walking on his own but said nothing in response. He was staring down at the floor, making Shiho unable to even try to read his expression. But she could see the way he tried to hide a clenched fist and knew that there something was needed to be said.

"Tell me," she urged.

Yzak murmured something that she could not hear.

"What...?"

Suddenly he looked up with such fury in his eyes that it scared Shiho and made her take a step backwards.

"What the hell do you want from me?!" he yelled.

Though her heart was practically slamming at her ribcage because of the shock and fear, Shiho forced herself to step up again and meet him.

"I don't understand what you're talking about," she tried to reason. "I don't want anything from you, I just..."

Yzak cut her off with a bitter laugh.

"You don't want anything from me? That's rich..." He shook his head. "You say it was all a misunderstanding, fine! You don't like me that way, that's fine too! But don't expect me to act like nothing happened after I told you all that!"

With each word he stepped closer to Shiho, forcing her back until she came to a stop when she reached the wall. She let out a quiet gasp when she felt her back being pressed against the wall and there was no where left for her to go.

Yzak closed in on her, putting both hands against the wall and on each side of her head. He leaned in slightly, bringing their faces closer. The way he looked into her eyes was as if he was trying to lure her into a staring contest.

"Now tell me that you don't want anything from me," he hissed, his forehead less than an inch away from hers.

Shiho closed her eyes.

This was too much. He was too close, too... everything, and she couldn't handle it.

She felt a rush of cold air and instantly opened her eyes.

Yzak was gone.

Turning to her left, she saw him walking down the corridor quickly. No, he was walking away from her.

"Yzak... wait!"

But he didn't wait, he didn't stop. He just kept walking away from her and at that moment she realized that he was going to keep on walking without looking back.

_No..._

This was her chance, her only and final chance. If she could not bring herself to act now, she might never have the chance again.

She dropped everything, her books, her folder, her bag, everything. Everything fell to the floor but she didn't notice it.

Instead she started to run.

He was still in the midst of walking when she jumped right in front of him and stopped him by placing both hands on his chest. Before he could say or do something in protest or perhaps before she could think it through, Shiho raised herself by standing on her toes and kissed him on the lips.

It wasn't exactly a carefully planned action, her lips ended up against the corner of his and their noses had just barely missed colliding with each other. But still when she pulled back and saw the dazed look on Yzak's face she hoped that he had at least gotten the point.

He looked at her with wide eyes as if he could not understand what was happening. All the anger she had seen in his face before was gone as if it had been washed away. It was seeing him so surprised that it occurred to her what she had done and upon realizing that she could not help but to start smiling at him.

"...I think I like you too."

--

_**Next: Chapter 5 - His truth**_


	5. His truth

**His and her reasons  
Chapter ****5: His truth**

Notes: Thanks for everyone who read and reviewed the previous chapter. It's nice to know that there are still people reading this even though I took so long to update. Many thanks also goes to Zero 7 for recording the song "Pageant of the bizarre" which I find suits the way the Yzak/Shiho relationship is in this story. It really helped me writing this chapter. This might be the last chapter before summer, since I'll be going on a long and much needed vacation. I might write a little if I get the chance to but mostly I'll just be taking it easy and relaxing. I'll hope you'll enjoy this chapter and that you'll have a nice summer!

---

The alarm clock rang, signaling the start of the day and of another week. Monday, one of the most disliked and hated days of the week, symbolized fresh starts. People woke up and told themselves that this week would be different, this week they were going to accomplish something. Monday was not the day of evaluation or accomplishments, it was the day of setting up goals to be accomplished during the rest of the week.

That's why it was so strange that on Monday morning, when the alarm clock rung, the most extraordinary thing had already happened.

Yzak Jule woke up with a smile on his face.

While being naturally incapable of being a ray of sunshine, this Monday marked a significant difference in him. His usual morning routine consisted of getting a quick shower, having a cup of coffee and then leaving to school. It usually took him twenty minutes from the moment he got up to the moment where he walked out the door. However, this morning was different.

After stepping out of the shower he stopped by the mirror, telling himself to stop looking so silly by smiling like that. But despite that he kept on smiling even as he got dressed and headed downstairs to the kitchen. His mother, usually already at work by the time Yzak got up, always put on a fresh pot of coffee in the morning. Yzak poured himself a cup as he did every morning but instead of rushing to get his bag or gathering his books, he just stood there in the kitchen and leaned against the counter. From where he stood he could look out the window and judging by the clear blue sky he knew that today was going to be a good day.

He was in no hurry walking to school either. Suddenly there was so much to look at on his way to school. The way the trees blossomed, children playing while waiting for the bus, a couple kissing each other goodbye as they headed off for work. The sun shining bright that day yet occasionally there would be a cool breeze that kept him from feeling too warm. It truly was beautiful day. In fact, Yzak even brought the coffee cup with him so that he could enjoy the coffee and the beautiful day at the same time.

Had the Yzak from last week, last month or last seventeen years seen what he was like now, he would have asked to be kept in a straight jacket and locked up for a long time.

But this was the Yzak now, the new and improved Yzak Jule.

The Yzak Jule who was... happy.

He caught sight of her the moment he walked through the school gates. Shiho was sitting on a bench, flipping the pages of a book and sometimes glancing at a notepad that she held with her other hand. She had tucked a pencil behind her ear, her hands being too occupied with holding the book and the notepad. The way Shiho sat there, completely into looking through the book and her notes, made her oblivious to the two guys standing behind the bench staring at her.

Yzak blinked.

_Wait._

Standing behind the bench where Shiho sat were two guys who Yzak vaguely recognized as third years. Although not directly behind Shiho they were standing a little too close for Yzak's liking. The guys switched between staring at Shiho and whispering to each other.

_What the hell are they doing?!_

His eyes narrowing, Yzak took the first step towards them when he suddenly caught sight of something else.

A group of girls, standing by the tree. There was nothing unusual about them, save for the shocked looks on their faces and how they did the exact same thing as those two guys. They whispered among each other and looked at Shiho, who due to her studying was completely unaware of it.

Looking around, Yzak just saw more and more. Nicol walking across the courtyard in a hurry, but taking the time look at Shiho as if there was something strange and interesting about her. From the second floor another group of girls stood by the window, looking at Shiho and talking loud voices to each other although Yzak could not hear what they were saying.

Yzak frowned. Suddenly it was like the entire school was taking notice of Shiho... but why?

"YZAK JULE!"

Turning his head around towards the direction where the voice came from, Yzak only saw a flash of blonde hair before almost being tackled to the ground by something heavy. Then the world spun, he stumbled back uncontrollably and instinctively reached out for something. Luckily his hand managed to grab the gate, keeping him from tumbling over completely.

Shaking his hair out of his face, Yzak looked up to see Dearka looming over him.

"What the hell are you doing?!" Yzak scowled, pulling himself up on his feet.

"I thought you were my best friend!" Dearka cried accusingly, his voice full of disappointment.

If Yzak wasn't a little startled by the strange way Dearka was acting, he might have reverted back to being the Yzak who yelled and caused ears to hurt.

"What are you talking about?" he asked instead, settling with just frowning and not looking particularly pleased.

Dearka crossed his arms.

"Why haven't you told me that you are dating Shiho?"

Had Yzak not kept holding onto the gates he might have stumbled back as he felt his knees weakening.

Dating?

Well, he guessed that was what they could call it. Although they hadn't been out on a date yet, so did it still count? She had kissed him after all, although it was more like she had tried to kiss him. But still... just the word dating sounded so weird to his ears and not particularly right in a way. Wasn't there anything else they could call it?

"Well?"

Dearka tapped his foot against the ground, looking extremely impatient. Not quite knowing what to say, Yzak stood up straight and put his hands in his pockets.

"Well..." he started, unsure of what to say. "It only happened at the end of last week..."

"Oh my god, so it's true?!"

Whatever anger or hurt that Dearka had displayed before was instantly gone. Instead he was staring at Yzak with an odd look of fascination, not completely unlike all those people who were staring at Shiho. Yzak suddenly felt as if he was some sort of strange animal at the zoo, not to mention that Dearka was acting sort of schizophrenic.

"How did it happen?!" Dearka questioned rapidly. "Last week? Who made the first move? Was it you? What did you say to her? What did she say to you?"

Feeling as though he was being assaulted by Dearka's question, Yzak was at a loss about what to say. He knew that he opened his mouth and tried to say something but considering that Dearka had fired about ten questions at him he had no idea which one to answer first. Not that Dearka seemed to mind, rather than waiting for Yzak to answer he just continued talking.

"Man, who knew... I thought they were kidding..."

"They?" Yzak repeated, frowning.

"Some guy told Milly's friend in 2C," Dearka explained with a shrug. "Says he saw you and Shiho making out last week by her locker."

Had Yzak been a more modest person he would have pointed out that his and Shiho's "kiss" hardly qualified as such, much less as making out. On the other hand, who was he to care about people thought? This was the new and improved Yzak, the one who did not get worked up about insignificant things such as this.

"Is that why everyone is staring at her?" Yzak asked, looking over his shoulder and at Shiho quickly. She was still sitting there studying. "Because we're the newest couple that everyone likes to gossip about?"

He almost felt like laughing. He had seen it happen to so many of his classmates, it was really pathetic how people made others' love lives their business even though they had nothing to do with them.

Suddenly Dearka's mood shifted again, from amused to very uncomfortable. Yzak could tell by the way Dearka scratched the back of his head and laughed. That laughter was no ordinary laughter. It was a little too shaky and high pitched for anyone to believe that it was genuine.

"Well…" Dearka started.

Yzak could also tell that Dearka was becoming nervous by the way he slowly took a step backwards, like he was doing it for his own safety. He honestly could not understand why. If there was anyone who knew that Yzak was a balanced, rational person deep down it would be Dearka. Then again Dearka was sure acting strange this morning. Perhaps Mondays was his equivalent to Yzak's' Tuesdays, only a little more bizarre.

"Well what?" Yzak demanded. "Is there something else?"

Dearka did the strange, high pitched laughter again. Frankly it was starting to scare Yzak a little.

"Well, it's just that… ehm… Eh…"

"Just spit it out," Yzak snapped, already at the end of his patience.

What could be so difficult to say that made Dearka this nervous anyway?

"…it's just that people don't believe that someone like you could have a girlfriend."

At that moment he forgot about everything. He forgot how he had awoken with a smile on his face for the first time since he was… for the first time. Seeing himself smiling in the mirror, slowly enjoying his coffee while strolling down the street on his way to school. The sunny beautiful day and all the children who played at the bus stop. The sense of everything in the world being wonderful and good, that nothing could spoil this wonderful day because he was happy.

All that was forgotten as the new and improved Yzak Jule waved goodbye while the old, familiar feeling of anger came back with a roar.

Literally.

"WHAAAT?!"

Birds fled from the trees and flew far away from the courtyard, several students both indoors and outdoors turned in his direction and someone swore that the window glass vibrated because of the scream. Dearka was just grateful that he had been around Yzak long enough to know when to cover his ears.

Breathing heavily, almost panting, Yzak was so full of anger that all his blood had rushed to his usual pale face.

"What do you mean someone like me can't have a girlfriend?!" Yzak yelled, grabbing Dearka's jacket and pulling him closer.

"Hey… take it easy…" Dearka urged though he seemed to be unable to follow his own advice. Tiny pearls of sweat had started to form on his forehead. "It's just that… well, people don't exactly think you're the friendliest person to be around…"

"What are they talking about, I am friendly!" Yzak shrieked, shaking Dearka violently for saying otherwise.

He did not know what made him sense it but suddenly he froze completely and instinctively knew that he should take a look around. When he looked over his shoulder, he saw that everyone in the courtyard had gone from staring at and talking about Shiho to looking at him instead. For a moment he thought that they all looked like goldfishes, staring with eyes wide open and partially opened mouths. They were not whispering or anything, just staring at him which frankly made him quite uncomfortable.

Gritting his teeth, Yzak reluctantly let go of Dearka and stepped back, forcing himself to calm down and not kick someone in anger. The usual buzz returned to the courtyard and people started to talk amongst each other again. Their talking and whispering only made Yzak clench his fist tightly and wish that Athrun Zala was around so that he could have someone to punch.

Despite Yzak being less than friendly with him just a few seconds ago, Dearka recovered quickly and reverted back into the role of a friend rather than messenger.

"Don't beat yourself up over it," he encouraged. "It's just that people… everyone didn't think you were the girlfriend type."

Yzak snorted.

"Why should I care what all the imbeciles at this school think?" he scoffed, raising his chin up slightly as he spoke.

Dearka chuckled, his laughter a lot more genuine this time.

"That's the spirit! And for what it's worth… the whole thing was a little unexpected but I think you two might be good for each other."

Though Yzak was still in a sour mood and could not quite bring himself out of it, he still appreciated Dearka's support.

"Yeah… I'm gonna go and talk to Shiho," he mumbled and stuck his hands in his pocket.

Dearka nodded.

"Okay, see you later then!"

After acknowledging Dearka's wave with a nod, Yzak turned around.

Shiho was still sitting on the bench with her books and seemed completely unaware of everything that had been going on. As Yzak started to approach her, he saw the way her eyes were completely focused on the book, almost looking desperate as she was reading. He wondered briefly what was on her mind and why she was so taken in by the book. He knew she was smart but Shiho had not struck him as the type who wanted to read at every opportunity.

When Yzak arrived at the bench, he lifted his eyes quickly to glare at the two guys standing behind Shiho. One glare was enough for them to get the point and they quickly disappeared out of his sight.

The pencil Shiho had tucked behind her ear suddenly fell out and rolled off onto the grass. Instinctively Yzak bent down and reached out his arm to pick it up. Unfortunately Shiho attempted to do the same thing and in trying to pick up the pencil their heads bumped together.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Shiho apologized immediately, noticing him for the first time. She reached up to touch his forehead where her head had bumped into his. "Are you okay?"

Her fingers against his skin… it felt good somehow.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Yzak mumbled, feeling like looking down on his shoes suddenly.

Shiho smiled and drew back her hand, much to Yzak's disappointment.

He sat down next to her on the bench, although still looking down rather than at her. Things that Dearka had said earlier still lingered in his mind. Dating? Was that what they were doing? Was Shiho his girlfriend now? Despite what people thought or didn't thought about them, Yzak really had no idea what they were right now. They had no exactly talking about what their relationship status was aside from saying "I like you" and "I think I like you too" to each other. As honest as it had felt at that time, right now Yzak thought that those words were quite vague.

How the hell was he supposed to know what was going on between them now?

What were they to each other?

"Is something wrong?"

Looking up, he saw Shiho looking right at him and realized that he must have been quiet for a while now.

"No, nothing," he said automatically, although he knew that it wasn't the truth. He didn't know how to ask, what to ask. Instead he tried to divert to conversation to something else and his eyes caught sight of the books she was holding. "Physics?"

Shiho nodded.

"Yeah… I thought that I'd prepare."

Yzak raised one eyebrow, puzzled.

"Why? Mr. Ghani didn't give us an assignment last week?"

Shiho blinked, looking just as puzzled as Yzak did.

"You do know that we have an exam…?" she asked carefully.

A sense of dread crept upon Yzak when he heard her question.

"Exam…?" Yzak repeated, feeling something cold run down his spine.

"The final exams," Shiho clarified, looking at Yzak with concern. "You do remember that exam week starts today, right?"

It was then, at that exact moment, that Mondays officially passed Tuesday for being the worst day of the week.

---

Their first exam was in, not surprising at all, physics.

Yzak scribbled the answers of the questions with such fury that his pencil tore holes in the test sheet. Stupid weak, bad quality paper. As if he did not have enough problems already. The hour Mr. Ghani had given them to do the test was not enough and Yzak's face was frozen in a constant scowl as he read his answers over and over again. But regardless of how many times he reread them, he still was not sure if the answer was correct or not.

It was not so much that Yzak had forgotten to study for the exams. It was more like in between being the head of the disciplinary committee, working on the school festival, the whole thing with Shiho and life in general that had prevented him from studying.

When the bell rang and Mr. Ghani announced that time was up, it took all of Yzak's will power to not tear the test sheets into shreds and set them on fire. Instead he just calmly walked over to Mr. Ghani, handed him the test without saying a word and then left the classroom.

Once he stood outside the classroom and in the corridor, he clenched his fists so hard that they started shaking and his knuckles became white. All the muscles in his face seemed to tense up as he thought about the test that he had just handed in. It was so stupid, so freaking stupid. It was not about him not passing the test because even without having an ego Yzak would be certain of that. He was smart, he was intelligent. Passing the test would not be a problem.

No, the problem was that he had forgotten about studying and as a result he would be doing so much worse than he would have usually.

He felt like banging his head against a locker or throwing something out the window. In fact, throwing himself out the window sounded tempting all of the sudden.

"Hey…"

Upon hearing a familiar voice, Yzak looked over his shoulder. Shiho stood behind him and smiled just a little when he turned around to look at her. For some reason, the muscles in his face relaxed when he saw her and the scowl he had been wearing for the past hour gradually went away.

"Are you okay?" Shiho asked. "You seemed a little upset when you walked out."

Before Yzak could answer he felt her hand close around his. Though a little startled by her action, there was no instinct or thought that told him to pull his hand away. The way she caressed her thumb against his knuckles made him relax his hands as well, as if it was the most natural thing to do.

"No, I'm fine," Yzak answered, something that was not completely untrue.

Shiho smiled and Yzak felt something stir inside him.

"I was sitting next to these two girls before," she started, then paused for a while as she tried to remember. "Miriallia and Lacus, I think? They told me talk to you about having a summer concert."

"Concert?"

Shiho nodded.

"More like an end of summer concert. They want to hold it the last Friday before school starts again this fall. Nothing's been decided yet, but they thought that they should invite us to a meeting in a few weeks and run it by us before they do anything."

Yzak suddenly tensed up again but not because of anger or frustration. What had caused him to reaction was the choice of words that Shiho had used.

"…us?" he repeated and looked right into Shiho's eyes.

She looked back at him.

Perhaps this was it. Perhaps now she would explain what she meant by referring to them as "us" and let Yzak know where the two of them stood. If she was referring to them as "us", that had to be good. After all, it would mean that the two of them were officially…

"Yes, the disciplinary committee," Shiho clarified. "You, me and Dearka."

Feeling as if someone had dumped blocks of pure lead on his shoulders, Yzak's mood immediately sank.

"Oh," he uttered in the most unenthusiastic way that was humanly possible.

Shiho gave him a puzzled look, clearly not understanding what was wrong with Yzak. She opened her mouth to ask but Yzak just shook his head.

"It's nothing," he mumbled, his hand slipping out of Shiho's grasp. "I'm gonna go to the library before the next class."

Turning around, Yzak walked away from her and had to put effort into walking away without dragging his feet. As he walked around the corner a group of girls immediately went quiet as he passed them. But his presence did not stop them from staring at him, something he noticed that a few other passing students did as well.

He forced himself to think logically for a moment, now was not the time to be focused on anything except for the exams. The status of his and Shiho's relationship, all the people in school who kept talking about the two of them… all of that would have to wait until later when he could deal with them. There were more important things to think about.

---

The next few days passed was a completely blur. Yzak remembered locking himself up in his room with all the textbooks from school and reading them religiously. Even when his mother came home from work and told him to go to bed he pretended to do so, only to turn on the lights and start studying again when he knew that she was asleep. Coffee was the only thing keeping him alive during those nights when all he really wanted to do was to close his eyes and get a few hours of decent sleep.

As if it was not enough, he spent nearly every break in between classes in the library. Writing one test, then rushing off to the library and preparing for the next one.

He hardly saw Dearka or Shiho during those days. Dearka, not being the most studious person, preferred to do other things than to sit in the library all day. Shiho joined Yzak in the library mostly but he forced himself to not pay any attention to her. Sometimes she brought her own books and studied in silence, other times she just sat by the window and looked outside. Even though Yzak knew that she was bored, he did nothing and said very little to her. Not that he would have known what to do, it was not like he knew what he was to her.

Despite all the studying, he did not have enough time to read everything and the same sense of anger still returned each time he handed in a test. Maths, geography, history, social sciences... he would pass but he would not excel in all the subjects like he had the ability to do.

Friday signaled the end of exam week. On the following Monday, at the end of physics class, Mr. Ghani held what felt like a one hour speech about how this class had done much better than he had expected and how proud he was of all of them. Yzak sat there, nervously tapping his fingers against his notebook and biting his bottom lip hard.

Mr. Ghani grabbed the stack of corrected tests and started to hand them out, beginning at the top left corner of the classroom. Yzak was sitting near the bottom right corner.

The first one to receive her test was Miriallia Haww, who sighed in relief when she saw her test score.

The clock ticked.

Mr. Ghani moved to the next.

Anxious and restless, Yzak grabbed his pencil, tapping it against the table as he watched Mr. Ghani hand the next test to Shiho.

The clock kept ticking.

God, could the man walk any slower?

Lacus received hers next, then Dearka and after that Athrun.

After what felt like hours, Mr. Ghani finally walked up to Yzak. He handed him the test sheets wordlessly and Yzak's eyes immediately darted towards the upper right corner of the first page.

70/100.

It was not a bad score. In fact, some would be envious of his ability to receive such a score considering the circumstances. He had not studied for the exam nor done anything prepare for it. There was no doubt that he would pass this class and be able to take advanced physics next year if he wanted to. This score was not bad.

But it did not mean that it was good.

His eyes fixed at the score, Yzak did not notice how the bell rung and that the class ended. This was one of the few times the teacher actually left the classroom before the students. Everyone walked up to the friends, compared scores and comforted those who were less fortunate. But most people gathered around Athrun Zala.

"Athrun… you scored 95 out of 100!" someone burst out.

"Wow, that's amazing! Congrats!"

"You're so smart!"

That was it.

Sweeping everything carelessly in his bag, Yzak got up and rushed out of the classroom. He entered the corridor outside so suddenly that a tall third year did not see him. Their shoulders bumped in a way that nearly sent Yzak stumbling backwards.

_Damnit!_

Though his first impulse was to go after the guy, he decided that it was not worth it and settled with walking away instead. But despite showing restraint Yzak was anything but calm. The score 70/100 had burned itself in his mind, a reminder of how he had failed in something that he was usually so good at. All because he had forgotten to study. It was stupid, no, stupid was not good enough to describe this. There was no word for how much of a miserable failure he felt like at the moment. Like that was not enough, it was also having being beaten by that idiot Athrun again. The fact that Athrun got a near perfect score and how everyone kept praising him only made him angrier.

He kept his head low as he walked through the corridor, not wanting to be seen by anyone and pretending that all the people around him were not there. All he wanted to do was to go back to the disciplinary committee room and find some way to calm down.

"Wow, he looks really angry…"

"No girl in her right mind would ever go for him… someone must have up those rumors."

Yzak frowned deeply and his hand gripped his bag tighter.

_Ignore them_, he tried to encourage himself. _It does not matter what they think._

He tried to tell himself that the committee room was not far away, once he was there he could shut the door and be left alone. But either he became more receptive to what everyone was saying or suddenly everyone became bad at whispering. It was like the more he tried to shut everyone out, the more he could hear what they were saying when they thought he couldn't hear them. Suddenly it was like everyone he passed was talking about him and looking at him like he was some sort of circus freak.

"But someone saw them kiss…"

"But he's so angry all the time… there's no way someone would date him."

"Perhaps she's like a masochist or something?"

"I bet he's the one who kissed her! I'd be too scared to do anything too if someone like that tried to kiss me!"

Yzak stopped and looked up.

The whole corridor became silent and the students stood there, in groups and leaning against lockers and wall. They all watched him standing there with surprised looks on their faces, as if they had not even considered the possibility that he could have heard what they had said.

Yzak's eyes drifted to where the last words had come from. It was Alexander Carrows, a guy in his third year who technically was Yzak's senior. But age did not matter as Yzak walked up to him with a cold and stoic expression on his face. He did not stop until he was standing one foot in front of the guy. Though he said and did nothing for a while, Alexander showed signs of nervousness. His face reddened and he instinctively started to take a step back closer to the group of friends he was with.

Seconds passed with Yzak saying anything or doing anything except for looking at Alexander coldly.

"W-what do you want?" Alexander stuttered and tried to stand a straight.

A last attempt to look like he was not scared.

"Your tie," Yzak remarked briefly.

Alexander, and the rest of the students standing in the corridor, immediately looked at the tie he wore.

There was nothing special about the tie. It was in the dullest and ordinary shade of blue and looked like it had been bought at the local supermarket. Everyone exchanged confused glances with each other and looked to Yzak for some sort of explanation but he remained silent. Alexander studied his tie closely, looking for anything visible that might be the reason why Yzak had pointed him out. Finally, after not finding a single stain or spot on the tie, he looked up and faced Yzak.

"There's nothing wrong with it?" he said, a strong hint of uncertainty in his voice like he was afraid to be the one who spoke first.

Yzak crossed his arms.

"It's tied very loosely," he informed.

Everyone's attention went back to Alexander and his tie again. It was somewhat loose around the neck like it had been loosened throughout the day. There was nothing uncommon about that either, it was something that a lot of guys did with their ties throughout the day.

"Yeah, it's kinda warm outside…" he explained, trying to force himself to smile but it looked more like he was just showing off his teeth.

In one sudden movement Yzak had dashed forward and tackled Alexander into the wall. Holding the tie in his hands, Yzak pulled at it and tightened it considerably. Pearls of sweat started to form on Alexander's forehead and although Yzak had not pulled at his tie hard enough to make it difficult to breathe, there were other things that invoked fear in him. The look in Yzak's eyes was enough. It was the look of a man who had been pushed to his limit and who would gladly take out his rage on the nearest object.

"Maybe if you tied it tight enough there wouldn't be so much crap coming out of your mouth," Yzak hissed.

Alexander swallowed and closed his eyes as if he was too scared to see what would happen next.

The other students held their breaths and waited to see what Yzak would do.

He was fully aware of it, aware of how everyone's eyes were at him. Whatever he did it would set an example. This would be the chance for everyone to remember what would happen if one made Yzak Jule really, really angry.

Yzak narrowed his eyes.

And backed away from Alexander.

The whole corridor seemed to release the breath they had held and immediately all the students began whispering among themselves again. Yzak did not listen to them and when he looked at Alexander he saw that the latter's face was completely red and he was breathing heavily like he had just run a marathon. The amount of relief Yzak saw in Alexander's eyes was enough to convince him that this was the last time he would dare to say anything bad about Yzak ever again.

Deciding that he had been standing around there long enough, Yzak pushed through the crowd and left behind everyone to whisper and gossip as much as they wanted to. It did not take long for him to reach the disciplinary committee room and once there the first thing he did was to thrown down his book bag on the floor.

The next thing was to kick the door.

Hard.

And several times.

How could they say things like that behind his back? What more had they said when he was not around to listen? How dare they laugh and joke about him like he was not a real person? How could they talk about him like he was beneath everyone else, like he was not worthy of having another human being caring for him?

All the anger, all the frustration he poured into kicking the door, not caring that he was damaging school property or if his foot was starting to hurt.

If he made his foot hurt enough it might just take away the strange feeling of how much he was hurting inside.

He did not know for how long he stood there kicking the door, paying no attention to anything but putting more force behind the next kick. But some time had passed when he saw a flash of brown in the corner of his eyes and heard Shiho gasp his name.

"Yzak!"

He heard her voice, hear the shock and fear in it. Yet he did not stop until she grabbed his arm and pulled him away from the door. His foot, aching and hurting after all the kicking, was not strong enough for him support himself on and the world spun as he stumbled backwards. But he did not land on the floor and it took Yzak a few moments to realize that he had fallen right into a chair.

Shiho knelt down in front of him, brushing a few strands of hair away from his face.

"Yzak, what were you doing?" she asked, her eyes wandering to the foot he had kicked the door with. "Why were you…"

"All those people out there…" Yzak began, lifting one arm to point out the door. "Idiots. Rats. Vermin. Vultures. Anything bad and deserves to be stepped on that you could think of!"

Shiho just looked at him with confusion.

"What are you talking about?"

Yzak laughed bitterly.

"They think that I am too horrible to have a girlfriend!" he burst out. "And it's completely impossible for me to be with someone like you because apparently the only way that it could happen is if you were too scared to say no!"

He slammed his clenched fist against the table, causing Shiho to jump slightly.

"Who cares what they all think…" he muttered, looking down. "I don't… I don't care at all. Let them think that I'm some sort of monster."

What did it matter what everyone else thought?

If this was how they had always seen him, there was nothing that could change it.

Someone who was so difficult that there was no girl in the world who would care about him.

Shiho's eyes lingered on his foot for a while, and then she raised her gaze and looked into Yzak's eyes instead. She shook her head slowly and her hand moved to cover his. But despite her touch, Yzak could not relax his hand like he did before.

"No wonder…" Shiho said after a while. "People have been coming up to me all week and asking if I was really your girlfriend. I didn't understand what it was all about."

Yzak met her eyes.

"And what did you tell them?"

He waited impatiently for her answer. He could not pretend that part of his anger came in that he did not know himself whether Shiho was his girlfriend or not. During the entire week she had not brought up the subject and he did not feel any wiser than he had when she had kissed him a week ago. But he needed to know, he needed to know what they really were. If she did not tell him now, he swore his head was going to explode once and for all.

Smiling, Shiho moved her hands to cup Yzak's face.

"I told them the truth."

---

When Yzak arrived at school on the next morning, he found Shiho standing by the bulletin board. She was positioning some sort of document on the board and held a stapler in her other hand. As she started to staple the document against the board, Yzak approached her, curious about what she was doing.

"Good morning," she greeted when he walked up to her.

"Hey…"

Yzak looked up at the document. Since Shiho was holding it up her hands covered most of it but from what Yzak could see it had the name of the school and its logo. It looked like the document was a memo from the disciplinary committee.

"What's that?" he asked. "You know that school is out the day after tomorrow… it's a little too late to be putting memos up now."

"I know." Shiho finished stapling the memo and turned to him with a cheerful smile. "Go ahead. Read it."

Even with her dark brown hair and dark violet eyes, Shiho looked like a ray of sunshine this morning. Her smile was practically beaming with joy and the smile reached all the way to her eyes.

Curious about why she looked so happy and about what was going on, Yzak looked at the memo again and read it.

The past week might have been awful. His exam results might have been awful. Everything that had happened with Alexander and all the students after physics class yesterday might have been awful. But all of that, all the anger and hurt that had come up yesterday, seemed to wash away when Yzak read the memo. Whatever joy that Shiho was feeling, it spread to him as well.

And he laughed.

It was the most genuine laughter, a feeling of happiness and that everything in the world being wonderful. Everything that he cared about, at least.

"So it's good then?" Shiho asked.

"It's fantastic," Yzak corrected.

Smiling again, Shiho turned around and started to head back to the committee room. Yzak stayed by the bulletin board for a while, staring at the memo for a few more minutes before following her.

---

For the three remaining days of the semester, everyone in school who passed the bulletin board could read the following on the memo:

_Notice from:  
The disciplinary committee  
of Rousseau Academy_

_Memo #7:  
YZAK JULE AND SHIHO HAHNENFUSS ARE DEFINITELY TOGETHER!!!_


End file.
